How do you TEACH reading comprehension, anyway?
In the past, our idea of “teaching” reading was to give students something to read and ask them questions about their reading. Unfortunately, if the students didn’t understand the text, this didn’t help them to understand it or to give them tools for future reading. One of the challenges of reading is that it’s an “in the head” process; what we do when we read is not visible to others. Today we know that the best way to teach students what good readers do is to articulate the thoughts that are going through our heads as we read; in other words, to think aloud. As teachers model their own thinking aloud, the students are guided to think along until, ultimately, they can apply the processes of thinking alone about their own reading.
“Thinking aloud has been shown to improve students’ comprehension, both when students engage in the practice during reading and also when teachers routinely think aloud while reading to students.” (Duke & Pearson, 2002).
THINK ALOUD – THINK ALONG – THINK ALONE
The following “Think Aloud -Think Along – Think Alone” protocol is based on work done by Roger Farr and Jenny Conner (2004) and employs the Gradual Release of Responsibility, from teacher modeling to guided practice to independent application.
Get Ready: To prepare, choose a passage of text that will be interesting to students and lend itself to higher level thinking. Prepare ahead by reading and planning where you will pause and what you will say. You may decide to focus on a specific strategy, like inferring or predicting, or you may choose to make general comments about what you’re thinking as you read, what you wonder, what surprises you or what doesn’t make sense to you. (A list of prompts for thinking aloud may be found in figure xx.)
You may want to enlarge the text or provide students with a copy of the text should they wish – and are able – to follow along. However, many of our students will simply not be fluent enough readers to follow along with an adult reader. This read-aloud (or shared reading) and think aloud is intended for listening comprehension.
Gradually Releasing Responsibility
Here are three steps to gradually releasing responsibility from teacher think-alouds to student think-alones:
1. Teacher thinks aloud: Read aloud with expression and fluency, pausing intentionally to articulate your thinking about the text and about your reading processes. Sample prompts for think-alouds may be found on the right.
2. Students think along: After modeling your thinking for 
several pages, continue to read aloud and pause at pre-determined pause points for students to turn and talk to a partner, “thinking along” about the reading.
3. Students think alone: Provide students with individual copies of a text that is prepared with strategically placed pause points for students to read on their own. It’s important that texts be at an appropriate level for students – challenging enough to require readers to think, but without placing so many cognitive demands on readers that the text becomes inaccessible. Have students record their “thinking alone” by jotting ideas, observations, questions or strategies. Bring together groups of students who read the same text to share and discuss their “think alones”.
Duke and Pearson remind us that even the best comprehension instruction won’t work if students don’t have lots of time for sustained reading for authentic purposes. Students need to experience a range of genres, in an environment rich in high quality talk about texts and with many opportunities to express ideas through writing.
THINK-ALOUD PROMPTS
- This reminds me of…
- I already know…
- I’m predicting that…
- I’m inferring that
- I’m wondering…
- Why is/why did…
- Should/shouldn’t there be…
- What happened to…
- I was/wasn’t expecting…
- I can just picture…
- I’m a little confused here…
- I’m not sure of…
- The key idea here is…
- This is worth remembering, I think…
- I think that the author…
- I need to go back and reread that part…
- Remember when it said…
- I love the way the author…
- I was thinking that…but now I’m thinking that…
- The most important message here is…
