Teacher Commentary
One purpose of these questions is to formatively assess students’ understanding of the texts. When students share out, take a poll if the answer shared is similar or different than what other students came up with. If different, allow students to use textual evidence to discuss the claims and work out a collectively agreed upon answer. In this way, students are doing the intellectual work and building independent thinking, rather than waiting for the teacher to validate their guesses. Any content knowledge that is agreed upon can be added to the “What we now know” list, and lingering questions to the “Questions we have” list.