This article reports on 2 studies with kindergarten and first-grade children from a low-achieving elementary school that provided vocabulary instruction by the students' regular classroom teacher of sophisticated words (advanced vocabulary words) from children's trade books that are typically read aloud. Study 1 compared the number of…

This article describes our attempts to transform knowledge from classroom implementations into resources, which we call Accessibles, to support teachers' implementation of Questioning the Author (QtA), an instructional approach aimed at building students' understanding of what they read. We developed 25 Accessibles, which are brief, single-issue…

Evaluated the development and implementation of Questioning-the-Author, an instructional technique that focuses on reconstructing and extending author meaning, and on refining and using related discussion comments to construct new questions and develop more evidential insight. Found that teacher talk decreased in quantity and increased in quality.…

Examines instructional procedures found in the preparation and questioning components of directed reading lessons to assist teachers in evaluating these procedures. Background knowledge and vocabulary development were examined in the preparation component; the story map in the questioning component. (Author/NH)

Discusses the authors' research regarding the traditional prereading element designated by beginning reading programs as "setting a purpose for reading." (Author/DB)