MORE HIGHLY DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD

							Based on Mosaic of Thought by Ellin
Oliver Keene and Susan
Zimmermann
  Opportunity is Everywhere
Every day provides teachers with ample opportunity to
improve students’ reading comprehension. Whether a
child is reading a picture book, the comics, a cereal box,
an instruction manual, a recipe, or a movie review, there
are strategies for getting students to assess what they
have read and eliciting responses from the students that
will help the students better understand the broader
meaning in their reading.
How to Assess Comprehension?
• Multiple ways to assess comprehension
• Most pervasive method is via standardized testing
• Any test that meets ordinary standards produces an
  approximation of a standard normal curve because
  achievement in any open-ended skill such as reading
  comprehension or mathematics really is more or less
  normally distributed
Standard Normal Curve
          Is/Was There a Need to Do Things
                    Differently?
• Ellin Oliver Keane spent six years directing the Chapter One
  reading program in Douglas County, Colorado.
• The profiles of many of the students troubled her.
• Most of the students read words from inventories successfully
• They decoded words accurately with acceptable pronunciation
• Some even read fluently
• After they read, many didn’t understand what they had just read
• Many didn’t know when they did understand, and when they
  didn’t understand
• Many didn’t know they were supposed to comprehend something
  at all when they read .
                    Reading at Risk
• Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America
• Longitudinal study of 17,000 adults from 1982-2002 showed that
  only 46.7 percent of adults read literature in 2002, down from 56.7
  percent in 1982. The group that read the least was young adults
  aged 18-24.
• Competing forces in the internet, handheld devices, video games,
  etc.
• We want students who become real readers, not just students who
  can answer some questions at school and go home.
• At the same time, we don’t want to kill the joy of reading by
  overdoing reading strategies
• Most of us weren’t taught reading strategies when we were young
  yet we read proficiently so why teach such strategies?
     Helping Children Make Thoughtful
      Book Selections Independently
•Text is MOST readable when children
• Have schema for text content and author
• Have schema for text format, print style, layout, density, and illustrations
  and graphs
• Can apply a comprehension strategy to leverage more meaning from
  narrative and expository text
• Have had prereading experiences, such as hearing a read-aloud from the
  text and/or discussion about the text content or format
• Have a need and/or desire to comprehend
• Have a history of or passion for reading
      Helping Children Make Thoughtful
       Book Selections Independently
•Variety is critical if kids are to develop a wide range of interests and the
capacity to move seamlessly from genre to genre
• Children need to read in a variety of genres
  • Children need to read text that challenges them in different ways, in both surface and
    deep structure learning
  • Children keep track of their choices to ensure variety and enable teachers to see at a
    glance whether they are reading high-quality text that crosses a variety of genres and
    levels
  • Teachers need to ensure that children gradually assume responsibility for selecting
    appropriate texts, then continue to interact with students about their selections
    throughout the year.
  • Modeling is critical—at repeated intervals throughout the year, teachers should
    model ways in which the select and recommend books.
  • Teachers can ask children to “field test” text—try a page or two, or a section; think
    aloud; use the five-finger rule (remembering to put a finger down not only if they
    come to a word they don’t know, but also if an idea is confusing.
        Metacognitive Reading Strategies:
      listening to the voice in your mind as your read
• Monitoring for meaning—knowing when you know, and knowing when
  you don’t know
• Using and creating schema—making connections between the known and
  the new, building and activating background information
• Asking questions—generating questions before, during, and after reading
  that lead the reader deeper into the text
• Determining importance—deciding what matters most, what is worth
  remembering
• Inferring—combining background knowledge with information from the
  text to predict, conclude, make judgments, interpret
• Using sensory and emotional images—creating mental images to deepen
  and stretch meaning
• Synthesizing—creating an evolution of meaning by combining
  understanding with knowledge from other texts/sources
How to Implement Reading Strategies
PLANNING PHASE
 •   Teachers identify strategy to be used
 •   Teachers explore their own use of strategy in a variety of genres
 •   Teacher s collect texts representing a wide variety of genres and levels they feel are
     conducive to teaching/modeling the strategy
 •   Teachers prepare classroom where students can meet in areas to discuss their readings
     and use of strategy; posters or other visible materials are available to reinforce reading
     strategies
 EARLY PHASE (instructional focus)
 •   Teachers think aloud about how proficient readers use particular reading strategy (short
     text).
 •   Teachers discuss how they use the strategy in their own reading and how the strategy is
     helpful in other areas of learning
 •   Teachers continually focus on how the strategy helps improve comprehension
 •   Teachers model ways in which the strategy can be used when reading particular text
     genres or levels
 •   (Student focus) –student begins to experiment with strategy in their reading (at class
     level, group level, or individual level)
How to Implement Reading Strategies
• MIDDLE PHASE (instructional level)
• Teachers continue to think aloud but use longer texts
• Teachers focus on how the strategy is used differently in different genres
• Teachers begin to discuss how strategy relates to other strategies previously
  studied
• Small invitational groups are created for students who are not yet
  implementing strategies
• Teachers diversify the texts in which the strategies are being implemented
• (Student level) -- students begin to diversify genres in which they use
  strategies
• Students use strategies in progressively more difficult text
• Students show evidence of using strategy independently
• Students are increasingly able to articulate not only how they use the
  strategy, but why it helps them comprehend more deeply and permanently
How to Implement Reading Strategies
LATE PHASE
Teachers model think aloud using the strategy in very challenging text
(above grade level)
Teacher use cold reads (text they haven’t read) to authentically reveal
through thinking aloud how they use the strategy the first time through a
text or passage
Choosing a Good Think-Aloud Text
• A short selection or excerpt from a book that provides natural stopping
  points for the teacher to pause during think-aloud, share his/her thinking
  about the strategy, and explain how the strategy helps him/her better
  understand the text.
• An interesting, perhaps provocative text in which children are likely to be
  engaged in the topic because it is relevant, compelling, or intriguing.
• A text that is more challenging than one that all of the children would be
  able to read independently
• A selection that is (or may become) a familiar, well-loved texts for
  particular group of children
• A selection from a student’s own writing that is conducive to thinking
  aloud about a particular strategy.
• For later stages in the strategy study, a variety of genres in which the
  teacher and/or students can think aloud about how to apply the strategy
  differently.
              Monitoring and Revising
                 Comprehension
• Proficient readers monitor their comprehension during reading—they
  know when the text they are reading or listening to makes sense, when it
  does not, what does not make sense, and whether the unclear portions
  are critical to overall understanding of the piece
• Proficient readers can identify when text is comprehensible and to what
  degree they understand; they can identify ways in which a text becomes
  gradually more understandable by reading past an unclear portion and/or
  by rereading part of al of the text
• Proficient readers know what they need to comprehend from a text—they
  are aware of their purpose for reading (what parts they need to pay
  special attention to) and what will be expected of them
• Proficient readers are able to assume different “stances” toward a text. A
  child should be able to read a book from the point of view of different
  characters, a book reviewer, or a writer doing researcher.
               Monitoring and Revising
                  Comprehension
• Proficient readers identify difficulties they have in comprehending at the
  WORD, SENTENCE, and WHOLE-TEXT levels. They are flexible in their
  use of tactics to revise their thinking and solve different types of
  comprehension problems
 • Solve word and sentence level problems using surface structure strategies
    such as decoding strategies and world analysis
    http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/target/phonics/
 • Solve text-level problems by monitoring , evaluating, and making
    revisions, to their evolving interpretations of the text their reading. They
    then compare the emerging meaning to their background knowledge and
    make adjustments to incorporate new information into existing memory
 • Proficient readers can “think aloud” about their reading process. They are
    aware of and can articulate the surface and deep strategies they use to
    identify words and solve reading problems.
              Monitoring and Revising
                 Comprehension
• Proficient readers can identify confusing ideas, themes, surface elements
  (words, sentences, text structures, graphs, tables), and suggest a variety
  of means to solve the problems they encounter.
• Proficient readers are independent, flexible, and adaptive.
• Proficient readers use text management strategies. They PAUSE,
  REREAD, SKIM, SCAN, CONSIDER THE MEANING of the text, and
  REFLECT on their understanding with themselves and others.
 Using Schema (background information) to
        Understand and Remember
• Understanding schema sheds light on the way children connect the new
  to the known, recall relevant information, and enhance their
  comprehension with insight they can bring
• One of the most effective ways of improving comprehension is to
  “activate mental files” before, during, and after reading.
• Proficient readers spontaneously and purposefully recall their relevant
  prior knowledge (schema) before, during, and after they read and learn
  (text-to-self connections).
• Proficient readers use their schema to make sense of new information as
  they read and to store that new information with related information in
  memory
• Proficient readers assimilate information from text and other learning
  experiences into their relevant prior knowledge and make changes in that
  schema to accommodate the new information. Linking new
  understanding to other stored knowledge makes it easier to remember
  and reapply the new information.
 Using Schema (background information) to
        Understand and Remember
• Proficient readers adapt their schema as they read, converse with others—
  they delete inaccurate information, add to existing schema, and connect
  chunks of knowledge to other related knowledge, opinions, and ideas.
• Proficient readers can articulate how they use schema to enhance their
  comprehension in all forms of text and in all learning situations
• Proficient readers capitalize on six types of schema when comprehending
  text:
 •   Memories from particular experiences and emotions that shed light on the events,
     characters, and so on in a book (text-to-self) connections)
 •   Specific knowledge about the topic; general world knowledge (text-to-world) connections
 •   Specific knowledge about text topics, themes, content, structure, and organization (text-
     to-text connections).
 •   Their knowledge of potential obstacles to comprehension (particularly to nonfiction text
     or text with completely unfamiliar content).
 •   Knowledge about their own reading tendencies, preferences, and styles
 •   Specific knowledge about the author/illustrator and the tools he or she uses to create
     meaning.
 Using Schema (background information) to
        Understand and Remember
• Each type of schema permits students to monitor for meaning,
  pose questions, make predictions, draw conclusions, create
  mental images, synthesize, and determine importance as they
  read learn.
• Teachers assist readers in activating their schema (giving students
  the necessary tools to recall relevant prior knowledge).
• Teachers help readers build schema (create background
  knowledge ona given topic, author, text structure, etc.) if they
  lack adequate schema for a particular reading situation.
                   Questioning
•Proficient readers spontaneously and purposefully generate questions
before, during, and after reading, depending on their purpose in reading
•Proficient readers ask questions to
•        clarify
•        speculate about text yet to be read
•        show skepticism or a critical stance
•        determine an author’s intent, style, content, or format
•        locate a specific answer in text
•        consider rhetorical questions that will take their understanding
deeper into the text
                   Questioning
Proficient readers use questions to focus their attention on ideas, events, or
other text elements they want to remember.
Proficient readers understand that many of the most intriguing questions
are not answered explicitly in the text but left to the reader’s interpretations
However, when an answer is needed, proficient readers determine whether
it can be answered by the text or whether they will need to infer the answer
from text, their schema
Proficient readers understand how the process of questioning is used in all
areas of their lives, both academic and personal
Proficient readers understand and can describe how asking questions
deepens their comprehension
Proficient readers are aware that as they hear others’ questions, new ones
(generative questions) are inspired in their own minds. In some cases, a
reader’s own question causes him or her to generate more
        Teaching Tactics: Day-to-Day
        Instruction in Comprehension
•By thinking aloud, teachers show how readers and
writers think
 • Teachers read aloud, pausing to make their thinking explicit
 • Teachers are clear about how the strategy they’re using helps them
   comprehend more than they would have comprehended without
   the strategy
 • Teachers work to ensure precision in their think-alouds, focusing on
   the most probing, high-level use of the strategy.
 • Teachers clearly describe how students can apply the strategy
   independently
        Teaching Tactics: Day-to-Day
        Instruction in Comprehension
• By modeling, teachers show how readers and writers behave
 • Teachers describe their lives as readers and writers—they relate their preferences and
   areas of passionate interest, describe how they select books, reflect on why they
   gravitate to certain authors, describe what they do when they encounter problems, and
   explain how they share their work to solicit feedback from others
 • Teachers create a classroom environment conducive to in-depth learning – and
   environment that is comfortable and encourages conversation and reflection
 • Teachers ensure that learning experiences are authentic—they don’t ask children to do
   assignments for the sake of doing an assignment
 • By demonstrating, teachers show how readers and writers interact
   and work with the ideas they understand
   • Teachers demonstrate or help students demonstrate a variety of
     ways readers and writers deepen comprehension, solicit feedback on
     their writing, extend comprehension, and share insights e.g., book
     selection
                           Inferring
•Inferring is the process of creating a personal and unique meaning from
text. It involves a mental process that combines information gleaned from
the text and relevant prior knowledge i.e., schema.
•When proficient learners infer, they create a meaning that is neither stated
explicitly in the text nor shown in the illustrations. The process implies that
they actively search for or become aware of an implicit meaning.
•Inferring may cause the reader to read more slowly, reread sections,
converse, write, or draw to better understand the content.
•Inferences may be more thoroughly developed if the reader pauses to
reflect and consider multiple interpretations and perspectives
                             Inferring
•When proficient readers infer, they:
 • draw conclusions from text
 • make reasonable predictions as they read, then test and revise those predictions as
   they read further
 • Create dynamic interpretations of text that they adapt both while they read and after
   they read
 • Use the combination of background knowledge and explicit information from the
   text to answer questions they have as they read
 • Make connections between conclusions they draw and other beliefs or knowledge,
   and use the inferences to extend and adapt existing knowledge
 • Arrive at insight after struggling to understand complex concepts
 • Make critical or analytical judgments about what they read
                          Inferring
•When proficient readers infer, they are more able to remember and reapply
what they have read, create new and revise existing background knowledge,
discriminate and critically analyze text and authors, and engage in
conversation and/or other analytical or reflective responses to what they
read
•Proficient readers revise their inferences based on the inferences and
interpretations of other readers
•A wide variety of interpretation is appropriate for fiction and poetry; a
narrower range of interpretation is typical for nonfiction text. Teachers
should allow great latitude for inferences, provided that the readers can
defend their inferences with a description of relevant, prior knowledge and
specific text they have read.
        Sample Think-Alouds Modeling
                  Inferring
LESS DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD: After reading to page 2 where Nikolai
first poses his three big questions. “I’m inferring that the boy has a special
kind of power that allows him to communicate with these animals. I’ve
always wished I could do that and I infer that these are his friends and that it
doesn’t matter that they’re animals and he's human.
MORE HIGHLY DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD: When I first started to read
about Nikolai, I realized that he has certain qualities that I wish I had. When I
read about how serious and pensive he is, how focused on trying to
understand the most important questions in life as such an early age, I
realize that there is something in his serious manner that we might all learn
from s we try to understand the world. I realize that Nikolai is providing a
model of being a thoughtful person interested in important questions in the
world.
        Sample Think-Alouds Modeling
                  Inferring
LESS DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD: After reading to page 7 where Nikolai’s
three friends generate answers to his questions based on what is happening
to them. “I’m inferring that Nikolai and his friends Gogol, Pushkin, and
Sonya have been friends for a long time and trust each other.”
MORE HIGHLY DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD: “When I read about Nikoai’s
friends hasty responses to his important questions, I conclude that, even
though we have good friends whom we trust, sometimes the answers to the
most important questions in our lives come from ourselves. I infer that the
reason Nikolai is dissatisfied with their responses is that he knows that the
answers to such important questions should come from himself and his
experiences rather than from his friends, no matter how much they mean to
him.”
        Sample Think-Alouds Modeling
                  Inferring
LESS DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD: After reading to page 13 just before
Nikolai rescues the panda. “I’m predicting (a type of inference) that Nikolai
will be the one to save the panda and her baby and that he will begin to
think about the answers to his questions when he does.”
MORE HIGHLY DEVELOPED THINK-ALOUD: “I’m predicting that because
Nikolai played such an important role in the rescue of the panda and her
baby that he will begin to realize that his questions may be unanswerable or,
if there are answers, they will have to come from him thinking about his
actions and how those actions help him understand ‘When is the best time
to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to
do?’” I also infer that, through our questions may be different from Nikolai’s,
this author and Leo Tolstoy, the author of the story that inspired this boo,
are trying to tell us that it is very important that we have big questions about
how the world works and that it is one of our jobs in life to consider the
elusive answers to those questions. I think that when we ask those
questions and seek the answers, we may be more able to help others, just
the way Nikolai did.
Using Sensory and Emotional Images to
       Enhance Comprehension
Proficient learners spontaneously and purposefully create images while and after they
read. The images emerge from all five sense and the emotions and are anchored in the
reader’s schema
Proficient readers create images to immerse themselves in rich detail as they read. The
detail gives depth and dimension to the reading engaging the reader and making the text
more memorable.
Proficient readers use images to draw conclusions, to create distinct and unique
interpretations of the text, to recall significant details, and to recall the plot/story or
information log after it was read.
Images from reading frequently become part of the reader’s writing
Images from personal experience frequently become part of the a reader’s comprehension
Proficient readers adjust their images as they continue to read to incorporate new
information revealed through the text and dew interpretations they develop while reading.
\Proficient readers understand and can articulate how creating images enhances their
comprehension.
Proficient readers adjust their images in response to the shared images of other readers.
     Determining Importance in Text
•Proficient learners make purposeful and spontaneous deciions about what
is important in the text at each level
• Word level: Words that carry the meaning are contentives; words that connect are
  functors. Contentives tend to be more important to the overall meaning of a passage
  than fucntors.
• Sentence level: There are usually key sentences that carry the weight of meaning for a
  paragraph, passage, or section. Often, especially in nonfiction, they may contain bold
  print, begin or end the passage, or refer to a table of graph.
• Text level: The text contains key ideas, concepts, and themes; our opinions about
  which of these are most important change as we read a passage. We typically make
  final conclusions about the most important themes after reading the passage. Clues,
  such as repetition of emphasis, illustrations or diagrams, symbolism, foreshadowing,
  character and setting prominence, and conflict all point to importance at the text level.
     Determining Importance in Text
•Decisions about importance in text are made based on:
• The reader’s purpose
• The reader’s schema for the text content—ideas most closely connected to the reader’s prior
  knowledge will be considered most important
• The reader’s sense of the aesthetic—what he/she values, considers worthy or beautiful
• Language that surprises or otherwise captures the reader’s sustained
• The reader’s beliefs, opinions, and experiences related to the text
• The reader’s schema for the text format—text that stands out visually and/or ideas that are
  repeated are often considered most important
• The reader’s understanding of text structures—for example, in a cause-and-effect text
  structure, the reader should direct his/her attention to causes and effects described in the
  text
• Concepts another reader mentions prior to, during, or after reading
• Frequently pointing out non-examples (what is unimportant) helps students to distinguish
  importance more clearly.
• Interesting discussion emanates from dispute about what is most important. Children need
  to work toward defending their positions, but there is rarely one “right” set of important
  ideas.
• Students should be able to articulate how they make decisions about what is important in a
  given context and how those decisions enhance their overall comprehensions of the piece.
                               Synthesis
•Proficient readers are aware of changes in their ideas and conclusions about a
text as they read further into the text. They can articulate orally or in writing
how their thinking about a given text evolves
•Proficient readers maintain a cognitive synthesis as they read. They monitor
the overall meaning and themes (there is often more than one theme in the
text). Proficient readers actively revise their cognitive synthesis as they read.
New information is assimilated in the reader’s evolving ideas about the text,
rendering some earlier decisions obsolete
•Proficient readers are aware of the ways text elements 9in fiction, character,
setting, conflict, sequence of events, and resolution) ‘fit together” to create that
overall meaning. They focus purposely on and use their knowledge of these
elements to predict and synthesize as they build sense of the overall meaning.
•Proficient readers are aware of the text structures in nonfiction (cause and
effect, compare/contrast, problem/solution, description, enumeration, and
chronological paragraph structures). They focus purposefully on and use those
structures to predict and synthesize as they build a sense of the overall meaning.
                             Synthesis
•Proficient readers are able to express, through a variety of means (written,
oral, artistic, or dramatic), a cogent, succinct synthesis of what they have
read that includes ideas and themes relevant to the overall meaning of the
text
•A synthesis is the sum of information fro the text, other relevant texts, and
the reader’s background knowledge, ideas, and opinions, and may be
produced or shared in an original way.
•Proficient readers use syntheses to share, recommend, and critically review
books they have read.
•Proficient readers can articulate how using synthesis helps them better
understand what they have read.