Wilhelm+Chapter+6



A writer’s linguistic and personal experiences will affect what is written. It doesn’t matter the effort of the writer to be unbiased, that bias will still be apparent in some way shape or form. Sometimes the bias is apparent, sometimes it doesn’t matter, and sometimes it’s a critical component of what is written.
 * __Introduction & Authorial Reading:__**

 When we read it, it is important to take the author into consideration. We need to consider what the author is trying to teach or share with the reader. Authorial Reading has two categories, A way of Seeing and Responding to a Text's Architecture; and Complementary Pursuits. We need to read a text with respect in the manner it was intended to be read using the meaning that has been "coded" into the text. Coded, meaning the punctuation, grammar, and other literary devices. In addition we need to teach our students (and ourselves) to get past comprehension, but to think about what we already know and to be the reader the author intended. Questioning the author can truly help the student understand what the author is saying. The premise of questioning the author is supporting our students comprehension during reading by intervening at important parts. Helping students understand that authors write their thoughts down in the text helps them construct meaning. Initiating and Follow -Up Queries are two instructional tools used in a QtA. These queries are created by the teacher before the lesson and given to the students before the text is read for the first time. The queries will give the students opportunities to engage with other classmates about the text and what they think the author is trying to communicate with the reader. Overtime this type of questioning will provide strong authorial reading in the classroom.To plan a lesson teachers need to first select or segment all the "hot" spots in the book. These "hot" spots could be vital to the understanding of the book or may be tricky for the students to comprehend. When the book is segmented, then queries are created for each portion. The teacher then reads the text aloud to the students, posing the queries for discussion. Queries could be literal all the way to inferential and should prompt student conversation about challenging the author and making connections between the text, self, and world.
 * __Questioning the Author (QtA):__**
 * __Questioning the Author (QtA):__**



**__Hillocks' Questioning Hierarchy:__** George Hillocks' Questioning Hierarchy became known to educators in 1980. While he originally constructed this hierarchy with a literature intention, many find it useful in classrooms to help students understand any type of text. Wilhelm states, "The hierarchy consists of a carefully constructed set of question types based on the assertion that 'before students can deal with abstractions...they must be able to deal with the literal and inferential content of the work" (p. 141). The goal of this hierarchy is to move the students through seven levels of questions varying from the literal to the inferential and into two types of abstraction: authorial generalizations and structural generalizations. This differs from Bloom's Taxonomy because it focuses more on how the content is constructed as opposed to the students ability to comprehend the work overall. Many may believe that this type of hierarchy sounds similar to QAR, however, it breaks the QAR questions down even deeper. It is important to keep in mind, Hillocks' Questioning Hierarchy questions are intended to be asked after reading because students need to have a sense of how different details of the book or text relate to one another. One of the outstanding aspects of this hierarchy is that in order to move from one level of question to the next, students must have a prerequisite to answer level one prior to level two and so on. Teachers can use this type of questioning to assess student comprehension and know exactly when in the text the student may have a misunderstanding.