Books by Raphael, Highfield, and Au, by Koechlin and Zwann, and by Beck and McKeown

QAR Now: Question Answer Relationships by Taffy E. Raphael, Kathy Highfield, and Kathryn H. Au (Scholastic, New York, 2006)

Professional resources on reading instruction frequently recommend teaching students to use question-answer relationships (QARs), a research-based comprehension strategy. Twenty-five years of working with QAR have shown the authors that it can provide a powerful and coherent framework for all comprehension instruction. Raphael, Highfield, and Au stress the importance of using the same QAR language for kindergarten through high school. First, students need to understand the two primary-source QARs: In the Book and In My Head. Then, they can move on to the next level, the four core QARs: Right There, Think and Search, Author and Me, and On My Own. A gradual-release-of-responsibility instructional model is offered for teaching students to use QAR to develop the metacognitive knowledge to form their own questions and select appropriate comprehension strategies to answer types of questions posed to them in a variety of contexts.

Raphael, Highfield, and Au offer suggestions for teaching QAR across grades and content areas with example vignettes from middle and high school science classes. Compelling arguments are made for how QAR can be used to deconstruct released items for standardized tests and provide responsible, embedded test preparation across the curriculum. After sharing the story of how one large Chicago school in a high-poverty setting successfully used QAR on a schoolwide basis to focus meaningful instruction on high-level thinking and preparation for high-stakes tests, the authors present additional specific suggestions for using QAR for systematic whole-school change. A teacher study group guide features questions for use before, during, and after reading each chapter.

Q Tasks: How to Empower Students to Ask Questions and Care About Answers by Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwann (Pembroke Publishers, Markham, Ontario, Canada, 2006)

Questions, according to Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwann, are the most critical key to understanding. Although kindergartners are full of them, by middle school, they are often stuck in "answer gear." The authors implore teachers to stop asking all the questions themselves and instead "put the spoon in the student's hand and see what happens." That is, prepare students for living and learning in the twenty-first century by nurturing the process of inquiry. Chapter titles include "Encouraging Curiosity," "Understanding Questions," "Learning to Question," "Questioning to Learn," and "Questioning to Progress." Each chapter offers several "Q Tasks," such as "How can questioning help form personal opinions?" Q Tasks are also described in student outcome language. Each "task" includes a detailed guide specifying the curriculum context, teaching and learning strategies, and assessment ideas. "Q Tips," with additional helpful suggestions and useful websites, print, and media resources, accompany each Q Task. To stimulate student thinking, over fifty reproducible templates and graphic organizers such as "Question Stretchers" and "Take a Position Line" are included. There are plenty of Q Tasks designed to help students develop and explore effective research questions. The authors believe that good inquiry questions can even alleviate plagiarism. Educators seeking to help students develop the thinking processes needed for asking rich questions will find a wide array of ideas that can be adapted for various content areas and grade levels.

Improving Comprehension with Questioning the Author: A Fresh and Expanded View of a Powerful Approach by Isabel L. Beck and Margaret G. McKeown (Scholastic, New York, 2006)

The book's subtitle promises "a fresh and expanded view of a powerful approach." It successfully delivers. While developing the Questioning the Author (QtA) approach in close collaboration with teachers, Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown have carefully researched it for the past fifteen years. In the QtA instructional approach, students and teachers grapple with comprehension during a discussion interspersed with close oral reading. Taking the stance that a fallible author has presented a challenge, students actively investigate meaning and connect ideas rather than simply retrieving facts.

Section 1 of the book explains how to segment both narrative and expository texts and pose strategically timed open-ended QtA Queries during the reading. Students learn that readers are always questioning and that reading and questioning actually enhance each other. Transcripts from actual classrooms show teachers how to facilitate thinking during discussions by using Initiating and Follow-Up Queries. In addition, there are detailed suggestions for six "Discussion Moves" that can be used to keep discussions productive: marking, turning-back, revoicing, recapping, modeling, and annotating. Reading strategies such as predicting and synthesizing are used authentically as the students build meaning together. The goal, of course, is that students eventually internalize QtA into their independent reading processes. The chapter on practical implementation guidelines offers ideas for using QtA flexibly in language arts and content-area classrooms and also includes reproducible planning and reflection guides for teachers.

Section 2 features twenty-five mini-case studies that thoroughly explore such common QtA issues as "How do you make a discussion more than a collection of comments" and "How does assessment fit in with questioning the author?"

Sheila Cantlebary is a reading content specialist at the Ohio Resource Center. As a former teacher in Columbus Public Schools, she taught English, language arts, and reading (7—12), served as a K—12 English language arts coordinator, and was a teacher in the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow program. Her teaching experience also includes facilitating State Institute for Reading Instruction and English Language Arts Academy sessions.

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