Questioning the Author: An Approach for Enhancing Student Engagement With Text - Softcover

McKeown, Margaret G.; Hamilton, Rebecca L.; Kucan, Linda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872072428 ISBN 13: 9780872072428

Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn, 1997

Synopsis

"Questioning the Author" (QtA) is an interactive teaching strategy that helps students comprehend what they are reading. When elementary students read in a QtA lesson, they learn to question the ideas presented in the text while they are reading, making them thinkers, not just readers.

Questioning the Author: An Approach for Enhancing Student Engagement with Text presents many examples of QtA in action. The authors analyze the transcripts of actual class discussions to show the important tools that differentiate QtA from other approaches to reading comprehension and engagement.

About this title

About the Author

Isabel L. Beck is a Professor of Education and Senior Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Margaret G. McKeown is a Research Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Linda Kucan is an Assistant Professor of Education at Bethany College, Bethany, West Virginia, USA.

From the Back Cover

Despite teachers' best efforts, students often fail to understand many of the ideas presented in school textbooks. This is a common concern among educators who encounter students who are not actively engaged with what they read. To address this concern, the authors of this volume present a strategy called Questioning the Author (QtA), an approach designed to establish student interactions with text to build greater understanding. When students read in a QtA lesson, they are taught to question the ideas presented in the text while they are reading, a strategy that differs from many traditional approaches that ask students to answer questions when they have finished reading the text.

Questioning the Author: An Approach for Enhancing Student Engagement with Text presents many examples of QtA in action as children engage with narrative and expository texts to construct meaning. The authors analyze the transcripts of actual class discussions to show the important tools that differentiate QtA from other approaches that have similar characteristics but that often do not help readers reach the same level of understanding.

Questioning the Author will be a valuable resource for elementary teachers who are looking for a proven strategy to engage their students in reading and improve comprehension.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 1

Questioning the Author (QtA) is an approach for text-based instruction that is designed to facilitate building understanding of text ideas. The diagram in Figure 1 captures the key aspects of QtA. As the diagram shows, QtA assists students in building understanding through the use of Queries and discussion.

Building understanding is currently viewed as what a reader needs to do to read successfully. It is important to consider that building understanding is not extracting information from the page, which is how reading was once characterized. Rather, building understanding involves determining what information means. Reading is constructing meaning. The difference between thinking of reading as extracting information and an emphasis on constructing meaning is important in understanding QtA, and will be discussed in greater detail when we consider the topic of constructivism.

Notice the label Text on the diagram in Figure 1. QtA is an approach that is used for teaching about ideas in text. When students read a text in a QtA lesson, they are taught to address text ideas immediately while they are reading. As students are reading a text, they are taught to consider meaning, to develop and grapple with ideas, and to try to construct meaning. This is quite different from asking students to answer questions about a text after they have finished reading it.

The way QtA supports immediate construction of meaning is through Discussion. Classroom discussion is certainly not a new idea. However, the purpose for discussion in QtA and the kinds of interactions in which students engage during discussion depart from what is traditionally seen in classrooms. Classroom discussions are typically characterized by students' sharing of their opinions and ideas, but this is not exactly what happens in a QtA discussion. Students are not encouraged to share ideas they already have but rather to collaboratively construct ideas from what they are reading. The important and somewhat subtle difference between the two activities will be discussed in more depth later. For now, consider that, in more traditional discussions, students usually have already read a text and formulated their own thoughts and opinions about the text's meaning. In a QtA discussion, the goal is to assist students in the process of constructing meaning from a text; therefore, the discussion takes place in the course of reading the text for the first time so students can share in the experience of meaning construction as it is happening.

Finally, as indicated in Figure 1, the word Queries appears between the words Text and Discussion. Queries is placed there strategically because in a QtA lesson the interaction of text and discussion is accomplished through Queries. Queries are general probes the teacher uses to initiate discussion. The goal of Queries is to prompt students to consider meaning and develop ideas rather than to retrieve information and state ideas. Queries tend to be open ended and author oriented, and they place the responsibility for thinking and building meaning on the students. Some examples of Queries are "So, what is the author trying to tell us?" or "Why is the author telling us that?" We will talk more about Queries in the next chapter, but for now it is important to know that they are a key instructional tool in QtA discussions that assist students in building understanding, or constructing meaning, from text.

Edition details

• Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0872072428
• ISBN 13: 9780872072428
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 128
• Editor: Beck Isabel L.