Why Is It Important To Think Aloud

Assessments should contribute to a student’s education and learning by including students in the learning process educators are able to assist and extend students learning (SCSA, 2014).

Encourage students to think back to this lesson when they are reading text. “If you come across one of these words or a new word that you do not know, use the sentence or sentences around the word to figure out the meaning.”

Research has shown how these engagement activities help students clarify new ideas and relate them back to the text. In addition, thinking aloud can help students increase the production of self-explanations and facilitate revision in the reader’s mind when they conflicted with the textual information presented (Lucero & Montanero, 2012).

The teacher should aid discussion to focus students’ attention on key areas as well as prompting students by pointing out ideas from their “K” section and asking what more they would like to know about this. Each student must then write down 2 or 3 questions for “what I Want to know” (Appendix C) based on their own personal interests of the topic (Ogle, 1989). Asking their own questions encourages students to go beyond the lesson content to work out their own explanation rather than simple rote learning questions and answers from text books (McConachie et al., 2006). Both the class brainstorming activity and small group discussions encourage accountable talk, which aids students’ understanding as they must learn how to verbalise and rationalise their ideas (Michaels et al., 2010). This element of the activity also incorporates prediction. Students must decide “what I Want to know” based on what they predict the text is about from the pre-reading activity (Gibbons,

315-317) was used throughout the lesson in order to give the students an example of how to use the strategies that were taught. Before children would work on assignments alone, the teacher would model exactly what is expected of them, and keep examples of what was modeled during the lesson so the students could look back to it if they need to. Read-alouds (Cooper, 2015, p. 37) were used in this lesson to really help children to focus on certain topics of the text. “Sometimes the best way to help children understand a particular piece of text is to read it aloud to them and discuss it with them” (Cooper, 2015, p. 37). Think-alouds (Cooper, 2015, p. 30) were incorporated into this lesson when trying to explain how to use the strategy of character mapping. Think-alouds are a great way to explain to students how to use a specific skill or strategy so that they can have a better time comprehending it. Semantic maps (Cooper, 2015, p.83) were used in this lesson for brainstorming ideas from the text to later reference when making illustrations and creating short responses to the text. This strategy is also a great tool for second-language-learners because it helps to narrow down the specific parts in the text to help create more details of the topic being taught. Cooperative “popcorn” sequencing(Annenburg Learner, 2015) was used in the lesson to allow a variety of students to participate in the

This helped me to understand the reading when it comes to having a test or quiz. Reading strategies can make a person have a deeper understanding of what they have read when they interact with

“The think-aloud strategy is a technique in which students verbalize their thoughts as they read and thus bring into open the strategies they are using to understand a text” (Oster 64). The idea is to engage the student into talking through their mental thoughts and processes, writing these things down so that the student is left with a record of what the text was about, what they think will happen, some key inferences they have made and the questions they have about the text. Wilhelm tells us that, “think-alouds make invisible mental processes visible to children” (26). These invisible mental processes are those which children deemed as “good” or “independent readers” engage in on an almost constant basis but which low-skilled or “dependent” readers either do not engage in or do not understand. Kylene Beers in When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do says that first, we must demonstrate the processes through a Think-Aloud for the students and then encourage them to do it on their own (42). The following is what Beers gives as a step-by-step in using the Think- Aloud strategy in the classroom (my own comments follow each step quoted from Beers):

The teacher provides assistance when necessary. Roehrig, Pressley, and Sloup also outline these important components of the lesson and add that the teacher should note what the student does well and where improvements can be made. The teacher should encourage the student to sound things out, speak slowly so that he or she can hear all of the letters in a word, and assist the student when he or she is struggling (Roehrig, Pressley, & Sloup).

Strategic readers monitor their thinking and recognize when errors are committed but they also know what strategy to use to correct the error. For example, they may need to reread the text to make sense, use context clues to understand unfamiliar words. No matter what the obstacle is, a fix-up strategy is applied. The K-W-L is a well- known teaching technique to assist in the monitoring strategy. The K-W-L chart provides the teacher and students opportunity to participate in discussions before, during, and after reading. It helps the student to ask and answer questions, identify the main idea and detail, and summarize the text (Santoro, Baker, Fien, Smith, and Chard, 2016 p. 284).

Student survey responses corresponded with the most expressed concerns of teachers. Of the 45 students surveyed (proficient and deficient learners in reading comprehension), all expressed that the vocabulary within a text is difficult and makes it hard to comprehend a reading. Furthermore, 73% of students said that language (the language used in the text and the format of a text) in historical or English readings were confusing. Finally, 86% of students said that most of what they read in class was boring and they found very little interest in the reading.

Teachers can help improve student reading comprehension by generating questions that get students to think about what the text means, and by

Reading aloud can be used to provide motivation and enjoyment, build background and develop academic vocabulary, teach specific strategies and skills for comprehension, and model fluent reading. Along with these purposes there are two different kinds of read-alouds: general and instruction. A general read aloud is used to great enjoyment in reading for the students and also create a motivation for students to read independently. Instructional read-aloud builds background knowledge for the students and introduces new concepts they may have not heard or learned

The teacher started the close reading instruction with activation prior knowledge. The teacher read the students a poem, “Walk with me Daddy”. Then the teacher instructed the students to tell a story about their dad or granddad. Then the teacher and students read the story “A Caring Father”. The teacher and students read chucks of the story at a time. The students read, then the teacher read, and they read a portion of the story together. The teacher asked the student the right there question, the think & search question, the author & me question, and the on my own question. The teacher asked the question to help the students understand the key points of the story. The teacher instructed the students to highlight important sections of the story.

We can see from table 4 that in total of 40% of the assessment is devoted to both focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information and examine and evaluate content, language, and textual elements. And the other 60% of the assessment is devoted to make straightforward inferences and interpret and integrate ideas and information. (Mullis, 2011)

Students having hard times in comprehending the thought of the text and what the author implies. It seems to be reading by words but not reading between the lines. It is important to know how comprehension plays an integral part in a manner of thinking and conceptualizing facts and ideas from the