Utilizing Read-Aloud and Reciprocal Teaching for Reading
Students that struggle with reading are nothing new for educators. In smaller class sizes, it becomes much easier for the teacher to either offer more individualized attention or be able to implement more varied differentiation strategies. However, in large classes, teachers need to consider available tactics carefully. In my context and similar experience in the classroom, the two approaches that have shown the most promise are think-aloud and reciprocal teaching.
Think-Alouds
The use of think-alouds has been around for quite some time and was developed as a protocol used for reading comprehension by Davey (1983). A think-aloud in simple terms means verbally articulating one’s thoughts while reading. Berne (2004) describes thinking aloud as the “verbal equivalent of the cartoon thought bubble” (p. 153). This strategy needs to be initially modeled by the teacher who will read a text aloud to the class and intermittently pause to share their thought process. Afterward students can be prompted to add to the thinking, for example by a think-pair-share activity.
To help a particular student struggling with reading and being affected adversely in terms of confidence and class participation, think-aloud offers several benefits. The first is that the technique necessitates the student to pause intermittently and reflect on how what they read is processed and comprehended. The student will then need to relate these thoughts orally, which leads to better construction of meaning from the text (Afflerbach & Johnston, 1986). Further research by Baumann et al. (1993, p.187) indicated that this technique “was highly effective in helping students acquire a broad range of strategies to enhance their understanding of the text and deal with comprehension difficulties”. The hope is that if struggling students can better deal with their comprehension difficulties, they should be more inclined to engage in class discussions as their confidence and self-esteem increase (Davies & Brember, 1999).
Reciprocal teaching.
Reciprocal teaching (Palincsar, 1982) with reading comprehension in mind offers students cognitive strategies that will help them improve in this area. The process is implemented through dialogue between the students and the teacher. Students use four initial strategies, predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing. In the predicting stage, students need to make suppositions of the text when they initially see it. Clarification, in turn, allows students to confirm whether they understood the text. Questioning shifts the students’ attention away from minute details and redirects them to main ideas and possible themes identifiable in the text. Lastly, summarizing encapsulates the previous steps, and the students’ concentration revolves around the main content.
The combination of these four cognitive strategies facilitates comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring. For example, teachers do not simply ask students comprehension questions but rather help students develop strategies that dig deeper into the text. Considering the dialogue nature of this strategy, students who usually are quiet or reticent are encouraged by group participation which may impact conceptual changes in the student (Meyer, 2010, p. 42).
In my context, this strategy is one that should not be used in isolation only in the English classroom. The student demographic at the school consists of more than 90% of English Language Learners. Students will benefit from this strategy in most of their other subject areas, as it could allow them a way to access and comprehend the content in most of their other subject areas.
References
Afflerbach, P. P., & Johnston, P. H. (1986). What do expert readers do when the main idea is not explicit. Teaching main idea comprehension, 49-72
Baumann, J. F., Jones, L. A., & Seifert-Kessell, N. (1993). Using think alouds to enhance children’s comprehension monitoring abilities. The Reading Teacher, 47(3), 184-193.
Berne, J. (2004). Think-aloud protocol and adult learners. Adult Basic Education,
14(3), 153-173
Davey, B. (1983). Think-aloud: Modeling the cognitive processes of reading comprehension. Journal of Reading, 27(1), 44-47.
Davies, J. and I. Brember, 1999. Reading and mathematics attainments and self-esteem in years 2 and in an eight-year cross-sectional study [Electronic Version]. Educational Studies, 25(2): 77-85.
Meyer, K. (2010). “Diving into Reading”: Revisiting Reciprocal Teaching in the Middle Years. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, 18(1), 41-52.
Palincsar, A. S. (1982). Improving the reading comprehension of junior high students
through the reciprocal teaching of comprehension-monitoring strategies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-C
Takala, M. (2006). The effects of reciprocal teaching on reading comprehension in mainstream and special (SLI) education. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(5), 559-576.