The Question Is the Answer - by Molly Ness (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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." --Daniel Willingham, professor, department of psychology, University of Virginia, author of "Why Don't Students Like School?", "When Can You Trust the Experts?", and "Raising Kids Who Read"

"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!" --Laura Justice, EHE distinguished professor, education and human ecology, The Ohio State University

"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!" --Gary Wellbrock, PhD, first grade teacher (at PS347 The American Sign Language and English Lower School) in Manhattan

"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." --Naomi Schimmel, curriculum coordinator, The Shefa School

"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!" --Mike McKenna, Jewel Professor of Reading at the University of Virginia

"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." --Sara Kajder, clinical assistant professor, college of education, University of Georgia

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).