Table 1: Discussion Director Questions and Higher Order Thinking Skills
| Advanced Levels of Thinking | Sample Discussion Director Questions Selected from Student Response Sheets |
| Analysis Compare/contrast Alike/different |
What character is most like you, the wolf or the crane? Why? Name some different things about their school and ours. |
| Synthesis Making predictions Pretend you are a character What if... |
If you had magic in you, what would you do with it? What would you tell the Royal if he asked you the questions? If you were chosen to dive, would you? If you were their mother, would you have married Mr. Smith? |
| Evaluation Make judgments/evaluations |
What lesson does this fable teach us? What is your favorite part of this fable? Why? Do you like the book? Why or why not? |
The Literature Circles Response Log sheet did not include any categories for selecting words as had been the case in grade four. The words selected by the students for Word Wizard continued to reveal interesting associations. The major categories or reasons for their word choices included: words they didn't know how to pronounce or read; words they had never seen or heard before; words for which they didn't know the meaning; words that were fun to say or sounded funny to them; and words that focused on the author's craft or style of writing. Students also included the page number that the words were located on in the text. The reasons they documented for choosing words and identifying the page numbers to locate the words suggests that the students were connecting more purpose to the Word Wizard component. Table 2 presents each category with examples.