The Think Aloud strategy facilitates conversations about reading for understanding, giving you insight into how your students are processing texts as readers. By modeling, turning over the responsibility to the student and observing her think aloud as she reads, you can identify what reading comprehension skills the student has mastered and what skills she may need to develop. Think Aloud also fosters meta-cognition skills necessary for students to become successful independent readers.

How do you do this:

1.    Select a central text.

2.    Project the text in a visible location.

3.    Identify processing skills most of your students need to work on. These will be the topics for your mini-lessons.

4.    Some possible skills

o   Asking questions

o   Clarifying

o   Connecting to other texts

o   Making predictions

o   Narrating thoughts while reading

o   Reflecting

o   Rereading

o   Reviewing for information

o   Skipping

o   Summarizing

o   Surveying for text features

o   Using evidence from the text to respond

o   Visualizing

5.    Highlight part of the text conducive to demonstrating the skills you selected for the mini-lessons. Model the skills aloud.

6.    Have students record the skills you demonstrate on the Think Aloud checklist.

7.    After modeling Think Aloud, have students practice with a partner or in a small group, using the Think Aloud checklist as a talking guide.

8.    Observe and scaffold students during partner or small group Think Aloud. These observations can function as formative assessments.