Exploring Metacognition Showing Kids How Smart Readers Think

Question to Ponder What are the specific skills or knowledge that students need in order to read effectively?

Thinking Strategies Connecting Inferring Summarizing Synthesizing Analyzing Predicting Visualizing Questioning Critiquing Notice and analyze the author’s craft From Subjects Matter by Daniels and Zemelman

Thinking Strategies Are Concrete Tools for Understanding To help students see how these tools are used, the teacher must think aloud what is going on in his mind as he reads.

Model “Think Alouds” If teachers can begin to slow down their thinking and notice what they do as expert readers of their content, they will know how to design effective strategy instruction.

Model steps and thoughts of expert reader. Students need to SEE what happens in the minds of proficient readers through modeling and then gradually apply the strategies to their own reading and problem solving.

What is a “Think Aloud?” Think Alouds help students understand the kind of thinking that is required by a specific task. The teacher verbalizes her thoughts as she reads or processes information. The student sees how the teacher attempts to construct meaning with unfamiliar vocabulary, making predictions, visualizing, connecting to what they know, verbalizing what confuses them, and uses fix-up strategies.

The Process Explain that reading is an ACTIVE process that involves thinking and making sense of text. Select a passage to read and develop questions to ask yourself about difficult points or unfamiliar vocabulary. While students read the passage silently, read it aloud. As you read, verbalize your thoughts, the questions you develop, and process you use to solve comprehension problems.

Process continued It is helpful to change your voice when you are reading and when thinking aloud so students can see there is a difference. Model coping strategies: ask questions, make predictions, describe what you see, connect to what you already know, determine what is important, verbalize obstacles and what fix-up strategies you will use. After reading, have students list cues and strategies used and identify other situations where they could use these same strategies.

Process continued Reinforce “think alouds” with follow up lessons. The goal is to gradually release the responsibility for use of this strategy to the student. Have students work with partners to practice “think alouds” when reading a short text. Periodically revisit this strategy.

Read the following passage Read it to yourself slowly. Think about your thinking as you read. Jot down your thoughts, questions, words that gave you pause, processes you used to solve comprehension problems Think about predictions, visual images, or connections to your life.

Salvador with eyes the color of caterpillar, Salvador of the crooked hair and crooked teeth, Salvador whose name the teacher cannot remember, is a boy who is no one’s friend, runs along somewhere in that vague direction where homes are the color of bad weather, lives behind a raw wood doorway, shakes the sleepy brothers awake, ties their shoes, combs their hair with water, feeds them milk, corn flakes from a tin cup in the dim dark of the morning.

Salvador, late or early, sooner or later arrives with the string of younger brothers ready. Helps his mama, who is busy with the business of the baby. Tugs the arms of Cecilio, Arturito, makes them hurry, because today, like yesterday, Arturito has dropped the cigar box of crayons, has let go the hundred little fingers of red, green, yellow, blue, and nub of black sticks that tumble and spill over and beyond the asphalt puddles until the crossing-guard lady holds back the blur of traffic for Salvador to collect them again.

Salvador inside that wrinkled shirt, inside the throat that must clear itself and apologize each time it speaks, inside that forty- pound body of boy with its geography of scars, its history of hurt, limbs stuffed with feathers and rags, in what part of the eyes, in what part of the heart, in that cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and knows only what Salvador knows, inside that body too small to contain the hundred balloons of happiness, the single guitar of grief, is a boy like any other disappearing out the door, beside the school yard gate, where he has told his brothers they must wait.

Collect the hands of Cecilio and Arturito, scuttles off dodging the many school yard colors, the elbows and wrists crisscrossing, the several shoes running. Grows small and smaller to the eye, dissolves into the bright horizon, flutters in the air before disappearing like a memory of kites. -Sandra Cisneros From Woman Hollering Creek and other stories

Your thought process As an expert reader, your comprehension skills have become second nature. Were you able to S L O W down your thought process enough to determine how you make meaning? Examine the chart on the next page to determine what processes you used to make meaning.

Assessing Use of “Think- Aloud” Strategy Not much A littleMost of the time All of the time Make/revise predictions Visualize Connect to prior knowledge Ask questions Determine important ideas or themes Make inferences Verbalize confusing parts and Use fix-up strategies

Think Aloud Example Zack’s Lie (Click to view)

Reflect to yourself What strategies were modeled? Why would those strategies be used when introducing a new book? When would you use the strategies that were modeled in the think aloud?

Thinking Through the Process Go to (Click to View)

Your turn To begin to feel comfortable with the process, try a think aloud with your students in the next few days.

Assignment: Model a Think Aloud When the teachers thinks aloud all she is noticing and doing as she reads, the students finally “see” all the steps and motions of an expert reader. 1. Choose a short section of text. It ought to be challenging and present some difficulty to most of your readers. What text would interest the student you have chosen for the course? What reading is at the appropriate level? 2. Decide on a few strategies to highlight. Brainstorm why and how these strategies will be helpful. What strategy(s) would support the needs of your student?

Model a Think Aloud Assignment 3. State your purposes. Ask students to pay attention to the strategies used so they can explain what, why, how, and when you used them. 4. Read the text aloud to students and think- aloud as you do so. 5. Have students underline the words or phrases that helped you use a strategy.

Model a Think Aloud 6. List the cues and strategies used. 7. Identify other situations (real world and reading situations) in which they could use these same strategies. 8. Reinforce the think aloud with follow-up lessons.

Reflection of Assignment Reflection: Please submit a summary of the first seven steps of your think aloud Reflection: How can think alouds help my students better understand what they read? Write a reflection of the process that is a minimum of two fully developed paragraphs that contain no less than four sentences each. Submit summary and reflection via Groupwise attachment.