Improving Comprehension with Questioning the Author

Résumé du livre

We want our students to be proficient readers. Engaged readers. Readers who get the big idea and can apply their understandings. But how do we help our students get there? Where do we begin? With this book, a combined and updated version of their two earlier books. Beck and McKeown assert that we begin by helping young readers make sense of a text as they encounter it for the first time. Their approach, Questioning the Author, harnesses the power of during-reading scaffolding to support comprehension. Texts can get tricky for students, even in places where we might not expect it. To guide effective comprehension lessons, we've got to identify those trouble spots ahead of a lesson and then develop prompts or "Queries" that open up and sustain classroom conversation in a highly strategic way. Queries signal to students to slow down and consider meaning, much as a flashing yellow light signals an upcoming curve in the road. "So, why did the author tell us that now?" and "Based on what we already learned about this character, how does this new information connect?" In QtA discussions, Queries invite students to engage with one another about the text and to continually consider what the author may have intended. Over time, students internalize this active, questioning stance and become stronger readers, more willing and able to wrestle with a text's ideas and challenges. This book is the definitive guide to a well-established, research-based approach to reading comprehension that works with any kind of text. The first section provides how-tos for selecting texts, planning lessons, developing Queries, and guiding QtA discussions. The second section looks at 25 common discussion scenarios, so you can see how to keep lessons on track. Sample texts, classroom dialogues that succeeded (and those that didn't) and detailed commentary provide you with explicit support. Book jacket.