Engaging Minds through Games: Using Gamified Strategies to Teach Geography
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- How Questioning the Author (QtA) Can Help Your Students
- Why Questioning the Author?
- How Does it Work?
- Evidence From Research
- How Can Teachers Get Started?
- Classroom Resources
- Useful Links & References
- Research Projects
- Research Team
“My [Questioning the Author] sessions with the pupils were enjoyable and satisfying and it made me want to carry out more QtA sessions with them. The pupils were enthusiastic and responsive. In essence, QtA made my pupils think.”
– Teacher
- 183 Primary 4 students
- 11 teachers
- Mixed-gender neighborhood school
Classroom Resources
- Handout: 6 Effective Discussion Moves for Teachers
- Annotated transcript of a classroom discussion
- Workshop presentation: "Teacher ‘moves’ for reading comprehension instruction"
Videos
Principal Investigator
Co-Principal Investigator
Knowledge Resource Bank
Questioning the Author (QtA)
Questioning the Author: Building Reading Comprehension Through Classroom Discussion
How Questioning the Author (QtA) Can Help Your Students- The research showed that students:
- spoke up more during lessons, even the quieter students
- gained new understanding of vocabulary and text meaning through negotiated interaction with peers and teachers
- showed some improvements on reading comprehension test scores, though these developed over time and were not initially significant
QtA complements the existing English language curriculum by incorporating open-ended discussion with questioning strategies to build on students’ understanding of the reading text
Why Questioning the Author?
To enable students to become independent, thoughtful readers, Questioning the Author (Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan & Worthy, 1996; Beck & McKeown , 2006) encourages the use of open-ended discussions with strategies to probe meanings in text passages. It promotes the notion of teacher and students discovering meanings of text together through query-driven discussions.
QtA has been introduced to students and teachers of a mainstream primary school, where participating students showed improvement in overall reading comprehension tests over a three-year period. Teachers also found that QtA aided students in comprehending vocabulary and understanding the ideas in reading passages.
How Does it Work?
Questioning the Author provides a framework for leading reading comprehension discussion. A key feature is to help students understand that a text is a collection of ideas written by a fallible author; therefore, the text may be ambiguous or incomplete. In this way, QtA makes texts less intimidating to students and encourages students to think critically while they read.
A QtA lesson involves teachers using initiating and follow-up queries to build learners’ understanding of a text during reading. The query-based discussion helps students learn to explore and probe the meanings of texts. This trains their overall comprehension skills and facilitates their development as independent readers.
Evidence From Research
How Did Students Respond?- Analyses of classroom discussions showed many examples of students gaining new understanding of vocabulary and text meaning.
- Query-driven discussion with teachers and peers encouraged students to explore and explain ideas in novel ways which they did not experience during structured reading lessons.
- Initially, students in the intervention group displayed a slightly higher improvement (non-significant) in reading tests as compared with a non-intervention group.
Students who participated for three years along with teachers who participated for three years showed significant gains.
How Did Teachers Respond?
- Teachers were initially hesitant as the lesson planning required considerable time. Working in a team reduced the load and over time, with developing expertise, lesson planning became quicker and easier.
- Teachers were also hesitant about the open-ended discussions. They were concerned that lessons would go ‘off track’. Over time, they found that they could keep the discussion on track, even with large classes.
- Teachers needed time to develop their confidence in implementing QtA and in deciding when it was best to use QtA or other reading comprehension strategies.
As teachers developed expertise, they were able to use QtA in teaching other subjects (e.g. Social Studies).
How Can Teachers Get Started?
Developing a QtA lesson
- Teachers can prepare a text for QtA by
- ‘chunking’ it into meaningful segments to identify the ‘major understanding’ of each segment; and
- drafting potential initiating and follow-up ‘queries’ for each segment
- Example of an initiating query: “What do you think the author is trying to say here?”
- Example of a follow-up query: “How does that fit with what the author told us before?”
When reading the text in class, the initiating and follow-up queries may be used to facilitate class discussion. The goal is to guide the students’ thinking and scaffold students’ construction of meaning around the text.
Managing discussions in a QtA lesson
Follow-up moves help teachers manage classroom interactions during reading comprehension lessons. These moves serve to probe student understanding and highlight crucial information in the text.
- Marking
Highlighting students’ comments or ideas
- Turning-back
Directing or redirecting students’ attention to text or to another student’s comment or question
- Revoicing
Reformulating or restating students’ discussion
- Modelling
Demonstrating to students how to pose questions
- Annotating
Filling in gaps or addressing students’ misconceptions with appropriate information
- Recapping
Summarizing the main points of the text or discussion
For additional details and materials, view our Classroom Resources.
Additional information can also be found in Beck & McKeown (2006).
Related links
- SingTeach, Issue 31, 2011, p. 1 “Look Who’s Talking in Your Classroom”
- SingTeach, Issue 52, 2015, p. 3, “Sustaining a Teaching Intervention”
- ReEd, Vol. 14, 2014, p. 4, “Sustaining Good Classroom Interventions” [PDF]
- ReEd, Vol. 21, 2017, p. 5, “In Pursuit of Continuous Teacher Development” [PDF]
- Research Brief Series, No. 16-017, “The Crucial Time Factor in Sustainable Teacher Development and Assessment of Student Outcomes”
Further Readings
- Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (2002). Questioning the Author: Making sense of social studies. Educational Leadership, 60(3), 44-47.
- Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (2006). Improving comprehension with Questioning the Author: A fresh and expanded view of a powerful approach. New York: Scholastic Inc. Amazon
- Beck, I. L., McKeown, M., Sandora, C., Kucan, L. & Worthy, J. (1996). Questioning the Author: A yearlong classroom implementation to engage students with text. The Elementary School Journal, 96(4), 385-414.
- Foong, P. Y., Png, J. L. H., Rasidir, R. A., & Silver, R. (2009, November). Questioning-the-author: Primary school students’ perceptions. Paper presented at the ERAS Conference, Singapore, Questioning-the-author: Primary school students’ perceptions.
- Jones, R.C. (2007). Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Questioning the Author. Retrieved May 19, 2010 from www.readingquest.org/strat/qta.html.
- Kim, Y-h., & Silver, R. E. (2016). Provoking reflective thinking in post observation conversations. Journal of Teacher Education, 67, (3), 203-219.
- Kogut, G. & Silver, R. E. 2009. Teacher talk, pedagogical talk and classroom activities. Paper presented at the 3rd Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference, Singapore, 1 – 3 June 2009.
- Png, J. 2016. Questioning the Author: English Language Teachers’ Perspectives. International Journal of Bilingual & Multilingual Teachers of English, 4 (1).
- Silver, R. E. & Png, J. (2016). Learning to Lead Reading Comprehension. RELC Journal, 47,(1), 71-78
Research Projects
The following NIE projects are associated with Questioning the Author research:
- The Impact of Negotiation for Meaning on Reading Comprehension among Singapore Primary Schools
- Comprehending Reading Comprehension: an Intervention in P4 Reading
- Reading Discussions and Reading Comprehension: Sustainability in Teacher Development and Opportunities for Student Learning
Research Team
For more information about this research, please contact the Principal Investigator A/P Rita SILVER at rita.silver@nie.edu.sg.
Principal Investigator
A/P Rita Elaine SILVER, English Language and Literature (ELL), NIE
Co-Principal Investigator
Dr PNG Lay Hoon, Jessie, ELL, NIE
Research Associates
- Ms Galyna KOGUT, Centre of Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), NIE
- Ms Huynh Thi Canh Dien (formerly of NIE)
- Ms Raslinda A. R. (formerly of NIE)
- Ms Foong Poh Yi (formerly of NIE)
Acknowledgements
This research on Questioning the Author was funded by Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) under the Education Research Funding Programme (OER 29/08 RS, OER 09/10 RS & OER 40/12 RS) and administered by National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore MOE and NIE.
This knowledge resource was written by Ms Lyndia Teow and Ms Tan Minying in June 2017; updated by Ms Monica Lim and Jared Martens Wong on 11 January 2022.
