“Beck and McKeown have outdone themselves! This book is a powerful resource for teachers who want to improve their students’ comprehension through lively and cognitively engaging discussion. The book is research-based, classroom friendly, and especially easy for teachers to follow. It’s a book for all times, all teachers, and all students.”
—Judith A. Langer, Distinguished Professor,
Director, Center on English Learning & Achievement
“Absolutely wonderful! We need more books like it, ones that help teachers put the significant findings from reading research into classroom practice. There is ample talk about improving students’ engagement with texts, but it’s not always clear to teachers how to achieve this goal. With this book, it all becomes crystal clear.”
—Tim Rasinski, author of The Fluent Reader,
Professor of Education, Kent State University
“Beck and McKeown have used their unparalleled expertise to develop an approach that teachers will appreciate for its power and elegant simplicity. Questioning the Author can help students effectively integrate information in the text with their own background knowledge and—over time—become more competent readers on their own. Novice teachers who use QtA will breathe a sigh of relief. Veteran teachers will conclude: ‘I wish I had this twenty years ago!’”
—Kathleen J. Brown, Director University of Utah Reading Clinic
“Proficient readers need to read deeply—to make inferences, ask good questions, monitor the coherence of the text, be aware that text is an act of communication by an author, and critically evaluate the information presented to them. Questioning the Author is the only method that directly scaffolds all of these cognitive and social mechanisms. With this book, teachers have access to an approach that is firmly grounded in both science and classroom practice. Bravo.”
—Art Graesser, Professor, University of Memphis,
coeditor of Handbook of Discourse Processes
“This book really is a feast. It demonstrates once again why Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown are leaders in our field. Teachers will want to read and study this book with colleagues, systematically try out the wonderful ideas it offers up, then share with each other their adventures in improving reading comprehension.”
—Claude Goldenberg, California State University, Long Beach,
author of Successful School Change: Creating Settings to Improve Teaching and Learning
“ When I use QtA with my students, they tell me they make connections to previous sections of text that they never did before. My eighth graders tell me that they now pose queries when they read independently. ‘QtA is in my head,’ one student said, ‘and I’m thinking and connecting all the time.’ With this book, which is written with such clarity and conviction, teachers have the power to break the cycle of having students merely recite information. QtA helps young readers learn to interpret a text and to discover the big ideas behind the facts an author has chosen.”
—Laura Robb, teacher, consultant,
and author of Teaching Reading in Social Studies, Science, and Math
“ Compelling and comprehensive! This book reads more like a novel than a teaching manual. Beck and McKeown provide clear, step-by-step instructions, accompanied by classroom examples, on how to plan and manage classroom discussions of text, and how to keep the dialogue on track in almost every conceivable situation. Teachers who believe that wide-ranging classroom discussions are not productive or are intimidated by them should read this book. While Beck and McKeown have developed their approach to improve comprehension of texts, they have also invented a general paradigm for learning. I expect that data will show that teachers who embrace this approach find themselves engaged in classroom discussions often, with benefits to all involved.”
—Ron Cole, Director, Center for Spoken Language Research, Boulder, CO
“I love this book. Many teachers wrestle with how to teach comprehension. They can read about theory, they can learn different strategies, but they are still left wondering, ‘What do I do?’ This book has the answers. I have rarely read such a powerful and teacher-friendly book that brings the classroom to life. Reading the book is like having a professional developer right there with you, coaching you and guiding you through this powerful method of teaching comprehension. I recommend this book to all teachers who want to know, ‘How do I teach comprehension?’”
—Janice A. Dole, Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning, University of Utah
“There are a hundred reasons to admire Questioning the Author. Here are my top three:
- It reframes the learning and reading we already pursue in school into meaning-constructive pursuits that highlight students comprehension activity.
- It mirrors the process of inquiry pursued by expert readers and in every discipline.
- It helps students think about the author and see that all authors are out to get us to believe, know, or do something.
Beck and McKeown’s simple, powerful Queries—What is the author up to here?—remind us to evaluate a text’s ideas. These three considerations are important to reading, learning and democratic thinking, but are rarely addressed in school. QtA addresses them all.”
—Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Professor of Literacy, Boise State University,
author of Reading Is Seeing
“Beck and McKeown have created the text for teachers looking for new ways to help students comprehend narrative and expository texts. QtA is especially critical for teachers whose students think that their lack of understanding is due to their own limitations as readers. Imagine their excitement and positive responses when they are helped to see that their struggles with comprehension may be due to the author’s writing style or word choice.”
—Laura Roehler, Professor Emeritus, College of Education, Michigan State University
“This book makes clear how important it is for teachers to know their students, analyze the potential problems texts can pose for them, and then seed discussions with questions that help students overcome these challenges. It’s through these “persistent and consistent” routines that teachers and students are able to soar into rich, purposeful discussions of texts of all kinds. Beck and McKeown remind us that young readers can only reach these high altitudes of understanding when their ideas are properly tethered to the meanings of a text. With this new volume on Questioning the Author, teachers have a full set of tools at their disposal for maximizing students’ responses to texts and for helping them learn from one another.”
—Donna Ogle, Professor or Reading and Language, National-Louis University
“What Beck and McKeown have done for vocabulary and beginning reading they have now done for comprehension. That is, they have provided a theory- and research-based approach to teaching comprehension that is practical to implement and proven successful. This is a must have volume for anyone who cares about teaching students to comprehend what they read.”
—Gale M. Sinatra, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas