91重口

Think Aloud

This exercise is intended to help readers examine and develop reading behaviors and strategies (metacognition).  The activity is a little complex, and students are a little apprehensive at first, but they seem to really enjoy verbalizing the text once they became more familiar with the exercise. 

Here is how the activity runs: While working in small groups, students read a section from the text aloud and verbally explain what is going through their minds as they read. 鈥淭eachers should select passages that 鈥榗ontain points of difficulty, contradictions, ambiguities, or unknown words.鈥� These materials are read aloud together with the use of Think-Alouds by the teacher (with students following along silently)鈥� (Tierney et al 287).  This activity can be done in small groups or as a class, and the students can do it as an impromptu activity, or they can plan what they will 鈥渢hink-aloud鈥� in advance.  Here are some suggestions for the 鈥渢hink-aloud鈥� activity:

Make predictions or develop hypotheses

鈥淔rom the title, I predict that the text will tell us . . . 鈥�

鈥淚n the next part, I think we鈥檒l find out . . .鈥�

Describe your visual images

鈥淚 have a picture of this _______ in my mind . . . 鈥�

鈥淚 can see the_____ in my mind.鈥�

Share an analogy or show how prior knowledge applies. "Like-A"

鈥淭his was 鈥榣ike a鈥� time when I was late for class because . . . 鈥�

Verbalize a confusing point/Identify problems

鈥淭his seems to be confusing.鈥�

鈥淚 am not sure how this fits in.鈥�

Fix-up strategies

鈥淚 need to check this out.鈥�

鈥淢aybe I鈥檒l reread this.鈥� 

Tierney, Robert, and John Readence. Reading Strategies and Practices:  A Compendium. New York: Pearson, 2005: 287.

For Teacher Use: This ThinkAloudKWL+ handout combines both the "Think Aloud" and the KWL+ reading activities. This exercise also asks the students to keep track of which "Think Aloud" techniques they use.

This page was created by Meghan Swanson.