At the heart of effective classroom practice is the need to teach students to think well.
When I work in classrooms, I sometimes stop and ask students ‘Who do you think is a good reader?’
They’ll often point to their teacher, or refer to a parent, but when they speak about fellow students, they are usually accurate in identifying one of the more competent readers in their class.
Then comes the interesting part, when asked why? Why did they choose that person?
Hands down, every time, they come back with the same answer ‘Oh, it’s… because they never make a mistake and they read really fast.’
When questioned a little further with ‘Is there anything else that makes up a good reader?’ Some students will extend their thinking to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, you have to understand what you’re reading.’
A common misconception that students have is that being an accurate code breaker provides an automatic pathway to understanding. As educators, we know that this is not the case. For students to walk away with a deep understanding of what they are reading, they need to be aware of where the real work lies for the reader. Reading is thinking and thinking is the key to understanding.
At the heart of the effective teaching of reading is the need to teach children to tune into their thinking as they read. We know reading is a complex and abstract activity and for the most part, it happens in our minds. So, our challenge as teachers is to help students understand what is going on in their minds as they read. Students need to understand that there is more to reading than just reading the words. ‘Students don’t automatically comprehend just because they can read the words. Too often we assume they are getting meaning when they are not’ (Regie Routman, 2003).
Reading is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. Successful readers need to focus their attention on the ‘processing’ of the text to gain meaning from what they are reading. This is the part that happens in the mind of an active reader.
Teaching students to be ‘active’ readers
An active reader is a reader who reads with great intent. They read with a clear purpose in mind which is to understand. Active readers tune into their thinking as they read. They draw on their prior knowledge and experiences to help them connect and make sense of what they are reading.
‘Probably the most important characteristic of effective readers is that they are active. When mature readers approach a text, they put their background knowledge and experiences on high alert. Readied for action, they use all kinds of knowledge to make sense of what the author has to say. This means they do much more than absorb the author’s message; instead, they transact with it (Rosenblatt, 1978). The term transaction implies that readers bring understandings and ideas to text in order to get meaning from it,’ (Gretchen Owocki, 2003).
By tuning into their inner thoughts as they read, active readers hold an inner conversation with themselves and the text, helping them make sense of what they are reading. They focus their energy on their thinking and understand it is this continuous interaction they have with the text, the back-and-forth inner conversation they have, which leads to understanding.
‘Thoughtful, active readers use the text to stimulate their own thinking and to engage with the mind of the writer. Readers construct and maintain understanding by merging their thinking with the text. They have an ongoing inner conversation with the author as they read, a dialogue of sorts where the reader engages with and talks back to the writer throughout their reading’ (Harvey and Gouvdis, 2007).
It is only when students tune into their thinking that they can monitor their own understanding of what they are reading. This is the goal for all readers and a clear indication that a reader is becoming an independent, proficient reader.
Teaching students to be strategic readers.
Firstly, we need our students to understand that there is more to reading than just reading the words. We want our students to enter reading with an absolute intent to understand what they are reading. We want to help build our student’s repertoire of strategies that are available to them to draw on to help guide their thinking.
By showing students how to draw on their prior knowledge and experiences, we are helping them use strategies such as predicting, questioning, visualizing, monitoring and inferring to make sense of what they are reading.
And while there is substantial evidence to suggest that teaching comprehension strategies improves students understanding of what they read, it is important that we don’t fall down the trap of teaching strategies for strategy’s sake. ‘Comprehension strategies are a means to an end; they are not the end themselves,’ (Harvey and Gouvdis, 2007).
Ultimately, we want students to build up a repertoire of strategies that they can draw on in a flexible way.
Depending on what they are reading and the demands the text places on them. From the outset, an active reader ‘will have clear goals for their reading and will constantly evaluate whether the text and their reading of it, is meeting those goals’ (Duke & Pearson, 2002). This flexibility allows the reader to adapt the strategies they use to the purpose of their reading.
Since the 1980’s there have been many research studies that have focused on identifying the thinking strategies that proficient readers use to understand. The strategies identified do vary slightly from one research review to another but what does not vary is the unwavering evidence that supports explicit instruction in how to use comprehension strategies will improve reading comprehension significantly.
The list of strategies that research indicates are worth teaching – that is if taught, they improve reading comprehension may vary but they often include the following:
- Setting purposes for reading
- Previewing and predicting
- Activating prior knowledge
- Monitoring, clarifying, and fixing up strategies
- Visualizing
- Inferring
- Questioning and thinking aloud
- Retelling and summarizing
- Text structures and features.
In addition to these there are other strategies worth teaching such as searching and skimming, re-reading (re-reading material will always improve a reader’s comprehension), recording (jotting down points or ideas, highlighting information, rewording it if you really want to retain information) and sampling the text (surveying the text before beginning reading).
Explicit teaching of comprehension strategies helps students build their knowledge and understanding of strategies that effective readers use. Modeling these strategies gives students an understanding of what these strategies are which is important, but it can’t stop there. For students to become independent in using these strategies, they need a deeper understanding of why they are important and how and when to apply them.
Observing an expert reader modeling the strategies in action is key. Reading aloud and thinking aloud in front of students gives students a front-row seat into the mind of an active, strategic reader. For the students, seeing the cognitive work that a reader does in real-time gives them a model to ‘have a go’ themselves, when reading independently.
Here are five teaching tips to keep in mind as you focus your students in on their thinking!
1# Start early and make it visible
It is critical that we begin modeling ‘thinking’ from a very early age. So, from the moment our students come to school, we should be focusing on their thinking skills. It is never too early to start tuning students into that running conversation we have in our minds that helps us understand.
2# Teach students to be strategic in their thinking
Being a strategic reader involves being tuned into your thinking as you read. That is thinking about the text as you read, monitoring for understanding, being aware when meaning is being impacted and having the strategies to draw upon to problem solve to regain meaning.
3# Become conscious of what you do as a reader – It will bring great clarity to your teaching
The reality is that the strategies we are teaching our students to use are the same strategies we use innately as competent adult readers. Thinking about how we use these strategies ourselves can really help bring clarity to our teaching. The more you become aware of what you do metacognitively as a reader to understand, the clearer you will become in modeling this for your students.
4# Be prepared to model what you want your students to do – Show doesn’t just tell!
Our responsibility as teachers is to make abstract things tangible for our learners. ‘Thinking’ happens in the mind, and it is impossible to see. We have a responsibility to our students to make thinking as transparent and visible as possible by letting them into the mind of a competent, strategic reader so they can see for themselves what an active reader does when they are in pursuit of understanding.
‘Much of our responsibility when teaching reading is to make what is implicit, explicit. Explicit instruction means that we show learners how we think when we read,’ (Harvey and Gouvdis, 2007).
5# Modelling needs to be planned for!
Planning for sharing your thinking and/or engaging students in sharing their thinking needs to be planned for. This requires the teacher to choose an appropriate text, plan where in the text you will stop and share your thinking (read aloud/think aloud), or engage students in sharing their thinking through thoughtful planned questioning (interactive read aloud). Explicit modeling requires thoughtful planning and does not just happen on the fly!
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Reference List:
Duke, N., Pearson, D.,& Ward, A. (2021).The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction: The Reading Teacher, Vol 74, No 6, pp. 663-672.
Duke, N., Pearson, D., Strachan, S.& Billman, A. (2011). Essential Elements of Fostering and Teaching Comprehension: What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction (4th Ed): International Reading Association.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Law, N. (2020). Comprehension – The Skill, Will, and Thrill of Reading. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Publishing.
Harvey, S.,&Goudvis, A. (2007).Strategies that Work – Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.
Keene, E.,& Zimmerman, S. (1997). Mosaic of Thought – Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Owocki, G. (2003).Comprehension: Strategic Instruction for K-3 Children. New York, NY: Pearson.
Routman, R. (2003) Reading Essentials – The Specifics You Need to Teach Reading Well. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.
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