1. Think-Alouds Based on the text:
Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud
Strategies
Jeffrey D. Wilhelm,
Ph.D.
By:
Brittany Storch, Lauren Brechtel, Ally Kotz, Hillary Long, and Kristi Tamasitis

2. What are Think-Alouds?
“Think-alouds in reading is creating a record, either through writing or talking aloud, of the strategic decision-making and interpreting process of going through a text, reporting everything the reader is aware of noticing, doing, seeing, feeling, asking, and understanding as he or she reads.” “Think-alouds are approximate duplicates of what the student actually thought about during the reading.”

3. Think-Alouds Help Teachers…
Deepen the awareness of the reading process
Help model these strategies
Helps assess students and plan instruction
Know what in text confuses students;
assess strategies; diagnosis problems
Support readers’ monitoring their
own comprehension

4. Think-Alouds Help Students…
Understand reading to makes sense
Move beyond the literal meaning of the text
Learn how to read using different strategies independently

5. Think-Alouds Being Modeled
Teacher performs think-aloud
Teacher conducts think-aloud with student engagement
Students do think-aloud; teacher monitors
(Gradual release of responsibility)

6. General Process Think-Alouds
General processes are the things that all readers need to master before moving on to more difficult text tasks.

7. Setting Purposes for Reading
Why am I reading this?
What am I hoping to find out?
What am I hoping to prove?

8. Making Predictions What does the title/cover make me think of?
What do you think will happen next?
Why do you think X did what he/she did?
What do you think X will do now?
Was I right?

9. Making personal connections
Is this similar to something that I have seen or experienced?
How does this relate to my own life?
Can this help me get through a problem or understand something?

10. Visualizing Close your eyes and think about what is being read.
What do you see?
What is happening?

11. Comprehension Monitoring
Does what I am reading make sense?
Does what I am reading fit in with what I already know or is it something new?

12. Using Fix-Up Strategies to Address Confusion and Repair Comprehension
Re-Read
Look at the Picture (If Any)
Read Ahead
Figure Out Unknown Words
Look at Sentence Structure
Make a Mental Image
Define Purpose for Reading
Ask Questions
Make Predictions
Stop to Think/Summarize
Make Connections
Ask for Help

13. Steps of General Process Think-Alouds
Step One: Choose a text that is both interesting to students and within their Zone of Proximal Development
Step Six: After several think-alouds using the above steps, create a list with the students about what cues were used for the strategy and post them.
Step Two: Explain what the point of what a think-aloud is in general (i.e. how it is conducted) as well as what this specific one is targeting.
Step Seven: Assist students in identifying others areas of life in which the strategy could be useful.
Step Three: Give students a purpose for reading.
Step Eight: Use a variety of follow-up lessons to encourage the gradual release of responsibility.
Step Four: Begin reading the text, pausing at key moments to verbalize thoughts regarding the strategy being highlighted.
Step Five: Have students determine and underline the words/phrases that were used with the strategy and discuss them.

14. Free Response and Cued Think-Alouds
QAR (Question-Answer Relationship)
Questions
Literal “Right There” Questions
Inferring “Think and Search” Questions
Personal Experience Connection “Author-and-Me” Questions
Life and World General “On Your Own” Questions
Visual Think-Alouds
Encourage students to draw during the think-aloud
Individual responses (symbols, pictures, etc.)

16. Why Do We Use Free-Response and Cued Think-Alouds?
“Students see how they read, share their characteristic ways of reading with classmates, recognize that others read differently from the way they do, and realize that expert readers call upon a wide variety of strategies at the same time – strategies that they may wish to appropriate and use for themselves” (Wilhelm, 2001, p. 68).

17. Rules of Notice for Character:
Titles
Names and Nicknames
Introductions
Problems
Actions
Physical Description
Clothing
Way They Talk/Language They Use
Typical Setting or Surroundings
Friends or People They Hang With
What Others Say About Them
Tastes/Likes/Dislikes
Character Thoughts
Character Changes
General Rules of Notice:
Titles
Beginnings
Climaxes/Key Details
Extended Descriptions
Changes e.g. in Direction, Setting,
Point of View
Repetition
Surprises and Ruptures
Endings

18. Visual Think-Alouds
Engaged readers use visual components to bring their own life into the reading.
Picture mapping, mind movies, symbolic story representation etc.
Learning Disabled are very visual learners
Have students share their visual think-alouds- why did they draw the pictures the way they did?
Reveals the student’s thought process.
Visualization check sheet for readers (pg. 120)
Individual use

19. Modeling Think-Alouds
Teacher does/Students watch
Teacher does/Students help
Students do/ Teacher helps
Teacher does/Students must help

20. New Genres
Do your own
Study students

21. Task Specific vs. Text Type
Irony
symbolism
Text-Type
Compare-contrast
Cause- effect

22. Talk Backs Enact procedural knowledge of a subject
Reflect knowledge of topic
Connect with prior knowledge
Recognize structures and conventions
Reference to the process of reading
Retelling

23. Important Genres New stories Arguments Authentic Connections
Reading strategies
Identify details, summarizing
meaning
Arguments
Most important
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24. Talk Back With News Article
What is the topic of the article?
What important ideas are expressed about the topic (5W &H)
Does it clearly make known how this event/issue related to other events (past/future)? How does it help think about what is important?
Is the story coherent?
What strategies am I using to create meaning? What tools am I using to critique the structure, writing, content?

25. Performance-Based Instruction
“Think-alouds can motivate effective assessment tools.” “…in-process look at readers engaged in comprehensive activity.”

26. Why Should We Use Think-Alouds as Teachers?

27. Quickly assess students Assess students over time
To…
Quickly assess students
Assess students over time
Inform our instruction
Homogeneously group students
Self-assess
Collect data
Communicate with parents
For…
Student peer-assessment
Student-teacher portfolios

28. “The premise behind it [think-alouds] is simple: the most important thing we can teach our students is how to learn” (Wilhelm, 2001, p. 7).