Project Design
Population
The public school district that was chosen for this study is a Title I District that has had to respond to the challenges of enrollment increases, the changing needs of the population, the integration of technology, and significant curriculum changes mandated by state curriculum frameworks. The school from which the sample was taken is one of the smallest of the district’s eleven elementary schools. Enrollment statistics for 2005-2006 indicated a population of 200 students: 11.5% African American, 17.5% Hispanic, 4% Multi-Race, Non-Hispanic (all of which were higher than the percents of both the district and the state that year) and the remaining 67% White. The school is a Title I school in its fourth year of a Reading First Grant implementation.
Sample
The student sample was a homogeneous group of 7 grade-4 students, who achieved average scores on the winter benchmark of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) oral reading fluency subtest. Of the four male and three female students, 29% were Hispanic, and 71% were White.
The sample was selected from one of the two predetermined fourth-grade classes in the school. Selected students were required to meet the predetermined criteria of average reading fluency.
This research project was an 8-week study that was implemented for three 30-40 minute sessions each week. Two weeks prior to the study, parental permission was requested and students were informed about the study: its purpose, the procedures that would be followed, the materials that would be used, student responsibilities and teacher expectations.
The intervention that was used to perform this study was the comprehension strategy presented in the text, Improving Comprehension with Questioning the Author by Isabel L. Beck and Margaret G. McKeown (2006). Questioning the Author (QtA) is an instructional technique that can be used with a variety of genres, utilizing a minimum of equipment or supplies. Queries, sometimes referred to as probes, are the fundamental tools of instruction for QtA discussions and are strategically presented by the teacher through a series of carefully thought out and sequenced discussion moves. In the implementation of QtA for this project, text was carefully broken down into portions by the instructor. During each session, those text segments were read aloud by the instructor to the group of participants, ensuring that all students’ exposure was comparable. A series of carefully planned probes, with an emphasis on fostering students’ ability to establish a clear understanding of what the author was attempting to convey, were employed after the reading of each segment. As a result, not only was there a change in classroom discourse by both the teacher and the students, but the students also gained awareness that text is merely someone’s ideas put into writing and may at times be biased or unclear. Rather than fostering text reading to determine a literal meaning, QtA strategies encourage a deeper understanding of text as the reader takes a more critical stance, examining the text for author’s purpose and fallibility. QtA discussion moves strategically discourage passive receiving and reporting of information, engaging students to interact with the text on both a public and private level as they critically analyze what the author has written and share their thoughts in classroom discussions.
Since QtA is implemented with a discussion format, many educators have expressed concerns of assessment and accountability. The purpose of QtA is not to determine which answer is “right," rather the interactions experienced during QtA foster a deeper learning level of comprehension and critical thinking skills.
Implementation guidelines followed daily:
¨ Students sat around a kidney shaped table.
¨ Text was read aloud by the instructor and discussed publicly by all participants.
¨ Participants were constantly reminded that authors are people who are expressing their ideas and are not infallible.
¨ Lessons were kept focused, and initial sessions were limited to a few discussion points.
¨ Participants were reminded that QtA can be incorporated into their independent reading strategies by stopping and thinking about what an author says and making connections.
Goals for Planning:
¨ The major understandings that the students should develop from a text were determined, and problems that they may encounter were anticipated.
¨ Text segmentations were determined not by the end of a paragraph or page but rather by major understandings within the text. Segments varied from as little as one sentence to a whole paragraph. If only one sentence contained information which was vital to constructing meaning, then the text was segmented there. Some texts contained paragraphs that discussed and reiterated the same idea, requiring the segment to be longer. Most expository text tended to be segmented in smaller chunks than those selections containing narrative text.
¨ Initiation Queries and potential Follow-up Queries that would help students develop understandings of the text ideas were developed and determined prior to the start of the session.
¨ The author was always put at center stage. If queried about intent, the specific crafting of sentences, even individual word choice, the author helped uncover the major understandings of the text. The author was allowed to become a participant in the discussion, as he/she was included in the conversation, arguments, and clarifications to enhance meaning.
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The researcher followed the guidelines and strategies outlined in the Beck and McKeown (2006) Improving Comprehension with Questioning the Author text. The following selections from the Signatures: Rare Finds anthology (Farr & Strickland, 1999) were used as text during the study. Eleven selections of various genres and length are listed in the order that they were read and discussed.
Mandy Sue Day by Roberta Karim (realistic fiction)
The Story of Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s Teacher by Bernice Selden (biography)
Sierra by Diane Siebert (poetry)
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry (fantasy)
Hiding Out by James Martin (nonfiction-informational text)
“The Young Rooster” from Fables written by Arnold Lobel (fable)
Mirette on the Highwire by Emily Arnold McCulley (fiction)
The Gold Coin by Alma Flor Ada (Spanish folktale)
Hugger to the Rescue by Dorothy Henshaw Patent (nonfiction narrative)
The Nightingale by Hans Christian Anderson (fairy tale)
The Skirt by Gary Soto (realistic fiction)
The researcher provided the students with the brief biographical sketch of the author, which was included in the Signatures: Rare Finds anthology. This selection was read independently before the Questioning the Author session to provide the students with background knowledge about the author.
Assessment of Student Progress
The researcher assessed the subjects of the study with three tools: Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE), Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), and audio tapes of each session. The comprehension assessments of GRADE and DRA were administered both before the study began and at the culmination of the study. The study sessions were taped daily and used to record the number of responses for each student per session as well as to take accurate anecdotal notes to more precisely and effectively document student response. These documented observations served the two fold purpose of providing immediate feedback to assist in planning and guiding of future instruction as well as a written documentation of student progress throughout the study.
This study was an attempt to determine if the intervention of critical thinking strategies, through the implementation of the instructional approach of Questioning the Author (QtA) (Beck & McKeown, 2006), resulted in increased comprehension ability of the individual subjects participating in it. The instructional moves and queries presented by the instructor in QtA were designed to scaffold students’ active efforts to build meaning from what they read. As a result of strategic, well planned modeling, students were taught how to identify, make connections to, and critically analyze key information in the text as they questioned the author’s purpose and fallibility. At the culmination of this study, students were able to actively engage with the text to build meaning during reading as they questioned the author. Assessment results suggested a deeper level of understanding and indicated growth in comprehension skills.
The researcher reflected daily as she segmented the text and wrote the discussion moves and queries to be used in each lesson on Post-ts. Those Post-its were then placed next to the appropriate segmentation of text. Daily review of the audio tapes provided an accurate and comprehensive recap of the lesson. Initial and follow-up queries were evaluated for effectiveness, and student responses were examined to determine the quality of individual comments and ideas as well as the students’ overall understanding of the material.
Student reflection occurred throughout the entire session as each participant was consistently invited to think critically about small segments of the text through the implementation of teacher posed queries and discussion moves. With the emphasis on articulating a clear understanding of one segment of the text at a time, the students were able to focus on building meaning in smaller chunks, with the intention that “the local understanding gets settled sufficiently so that the global understandings are founded on solid ground” (Beck & McKeown, 2006, p. 32).
At the completion of this study, the students internalized the queries and began to implement them automatically during independent reading of all genres in all subject areas. They started to critically analyze each selection that they read, questioning the author’s purpose and fallibility. The researcher internalized both queries and instructional moves well enough to integrate them naturally into all instruction, consistently asking her students to take a critical stance in the reading and discussion of all text.
