The Question is the Answer: Supporting Student-Generated Queries in Elementary Classrooms

The Question is the Answer is a teacher’s guide to helping young readers generate text-based questions. The purpose of this book is to help teachers and parents value and promote student-generated questions to facilitate motivation, engagement, and cognitive development.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: Inside Inquiry-Based Classrooms: The Research Basis for Question Generation Chapter Two: Tried But True Questioning Strategies Chapter Three: Questioning Inside Kindergarten Classrooms Chapter Four: Questioning Inside First-Grade Classrooms Chapter Five: Questioning Inside Second-Grade Classrooms Chapter Six: Questioning Inside Third-Grade Classrooms Chapter Seven: Questioning Inside Fourth-Grade Classrooms Chapter Eight: Questioning Inside Fifth-Grade Classrooms References

About the Author :
Molly Ness is an associate professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University, and earned her PhD in Reading Education from the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on reading comprehension instruction, the instructional decisions and beliefs of preservice and inservice teachers, and the assessment and diagnosis of struggling readers. A former Teach For America corps member, she is an experienced classroom teacher. She is the author of Lessons to Learn: Voices from the Front Lines of Teach for America (Routledge Falmer, 2004).

Review :
Brilliant. Molly Ness takes decades of research on the cognitive role of questioning and distills it into concrete plans for classroom practice. The Question is the Answer will bring greater curiosity, learning, and wonderment to any classroom. Ness has done it again! This is an innovative and authoritative look at how children use questions to learn, and how we – teachers and parents – can use these questions to improve children’s learning and achievement. This book is scientifically grounded but full of practical guidelines. A brilliant read! I wholeheartedly applaud Dr. Ness for delivering a book that celebrates, encourages, and expands on children’s natural curiosity. The Question is the Answer helps teachers find a way back to joyful, collaborative exploration in the classroom. This book can be used to guide instruction and learning within elementary classrooms or as a tool to promote vertical alignment across the grades. It is a treasure from cover to cover! Presents a highly readable approach on how to enhance comprehension and excitement about learning. Supported by current research and filled with real-world examples and practical strategies that are incredibly useful for parents, teachers, and anyone working with young children. My visits to elementary classrooms have convinced me that teaching students to generate questions is often a hit-or-miss endeavor. The truth is, being effective requires far more than asking students to ask questions. This is why The Question is the Answer is such an important book. In it, Molly Ness has crafted a superb resource that should be on every teacher’s must-read list. She distills the research evidence into easily understood approaches that together define best practice. Her vignettes illustrate these approaches with true insight, and they reflect a writing style that is both warm and engrossing. I rarely say this about an academic book, but this one’s a page-turner! Grounded in what we know about inquiry, effective teaching, and what it means to learn alongside our students, Ness helps us consider not only the structure and substance of our questions but the ways in which we grow and build questioning skills over time. This book is about far more than a collection of strategies for the classroom (though it has those in abundance). This is a book that challenges us to firmly root schooling in what it means to discover, to question, and to learn.