This article describes the basis of Questioning the Author, an approach to encourage students to engage with text ideas. The article begins with a description of what motivated us to design the approach, which was based on a series of studies conducted in the 1980s that provided a revealing look at how young readers interact with the ideas in their textbooks. We observed that students tended to resist grappling with text ideas, but rather dealt with text at a surface level. We hypothesized that students could be encouraged to consider text ideas if the reading situation was set up as a dialogue with a text's authorthus our notion of Questioning the Author. Examples of how Questioning the Author functions in classrooms are provided. A summary of findings from implementations of Questioning the Author are presented in terms of changes in the roles of both teachers and students in classroom discussion.

A study that investigated the relationship between vocabulary instruction and reading comprehension was replicated and extended. The original study showed substantial gains in accuracy of word knowledge and speed of lexical access, but only marginal gains in comprehension. This latter result was attributable to methodological problems, and thus the comprehension measure was revised. In the present study, fourth graders were taught 104 words over a five-month period. Following instruction, these children and a group of uninstructed children matched on preinstruction vocabulary and comprehension ability performed tasks to measure accuracy of word knowledge, speed of lexical access, and comprehension of stories containing taught words. Instructed children showed substantial advantage in all tasks. Reasons for these results, in contrast to studies that have failed to improve comprehension through vocabulary instruction, are discussed.

The goal of this investigation was to gain an understanding of engagement as fourth graders and their teachers attempted to construct meaningful interpretations during classroom discussions of literature. Data from videotaped discussion, field notes, and interviews with students and teachers were analyzed inductively. Engagement occurred when students and teachers used interpretive tools to select, connect, and organize information in the text to construct meaningful interpretations. The context of the literary act and the culture of the classroom influenced engaged reading. There were cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational components to the engagement observed.

The purpose of the present study was to de termine the extent to which the proc ess of de riving word meaning from context could be enhanc ed through an instructional intervention that modeled a process of word-meaning acquisition and guided students through that proc ess. Five less-skilled readers in grades ve and six were engaged in a one-on-one instructional intervention.

Describes reading-comprehension technique called "Questioning the Author," which focuses on teaching students to concentrate on building understanding of the ideas in the text. Provides examples of this reading-comprehension technique in geography and history. (PKP)

Explains the relevance of reading-comprehension research for classroom teachers, discussing how knowledge of the world and active engagement with ideas in the text influence comprehension and looking at how to develop both these capabilities. Four sections discuss the power of background knowledge, reading aloud and discussing literature with children, active engagement in independent reading, and questioning the author. (SM)