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USING QUALITY READ-ALOUDS AND OAA FORMAT TO INSPIRE THINK ALOUD DIALOGUE

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Using Quality Read-Alouds and OAA Format to Inspire Think Aloud Dialogue

Kari A. Shumate

Muskingum College

EDUC 710

Practitioner Project

Sue Peyton

March 30, 2010


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Abstract

Reading comprehension is the overall purpose of reading. Reading-aloud to children is the first

and most essential building block of learning how to read. There are other vital components of

reading including: phonics, word recognition, and fluency. However, reading comprehension is

the goal. To facilitate reading comprehension children benefit from adult modeling of the

thought processes involved in creating meaning from text. In order to verbalize their

comprehension, children need modeling of conversation and interpretation. This can be achieved

by Think Alouds. Think alouds are the strategies that efficient readers rely on before, during and

after they read. The first standardized test that Ohio children will face is the third grade Ohio

Achievement Assessment (OAA). This will assess their reading comprehension. In order to

empower my kindergarten through third grade students to be successful, I will utilize quality

read alouds in an inviting, safe community that will cultivate dialogue and thus increase

comprehension.

Key words: read-alouds, think alouds, reading comprehension, phonics, Ohio Achievement

Assessment (OAA), metacognition


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“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual

success in reading is reading aloud to children” (Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook, 2001). It

is no surprise that, as adults, we choose to read what we enjoy reading and what interests us. Is

that what makes a quality read-aloud? Yes. Great read–alouds are chosen because they appeal to

both genders and have a balance of topics, genre, and perspectives. (Reid, 2009) Keeping in

mind at all times your audience and their interests. There has been a steady decline of students

reading for pleasure. In Kindergarten we start with one hundred percent interest but by fourth

grade we are seeing a large drop to only fifty-four percent of students reading for pleasure. By

the time our students graduate from high school only twenty-two percent are reading for

pleasure. (Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook, 2001) It is a fact that humans are pleasure

centered and that reading is an accrued skill. “And of the two forms of literature (fiction and non-

fiction), the one that brings us closest and presents the meaning of life most clearly to the child is

fiction” This was said by the three time Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and poet Robert Penn

Warren who wrote that we read fiction because:

*We like it.

*There’s conflict in it and conflict is the center of life.

*It allows us to vent our emotions with tears, laughter, love and hate.

*Its conflict wakes us up from the tedium of everyday life.

*We hope the story will give us a clue to our own life story.


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*It releases us from life’s pressures by allowing us to escape into other people’s lives.

(Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook Sixth Edition, 2006)

Quality read-alouds should inspire an emotional response by connecting to the reader’s

social and emotional issues. ‘Reading aloud is also meant to promote pleasure and enjoyment—

to bring joy to life in school.’ (Peterson, R.& Eeds, M., 2007) Most importantly, the read aloud

has to come alive. This cannot be accomplished by text alone but requires the reader to model

the fluency and enjoyment that they wish upon the listener. (Trelease, The Read-Aloud

Handbook, 2001) The teacher or parent that is reading-aloud should be prepared to read fluently

(expression and voice) to model tone, inflection, and gusto. (Bradbury, 2003)

Discussion

As outlined before, it may seem common sense for a seven year old, but I needed the

confirmation on what deems a book a quality read-aloud. A quality read-aloud is a good book.

It is one that you would find mangled and well-loved at your own house. It is a book that you

never tire of reading and it makes you feel…..something. It is of great importance to educators

that we teach to the indicators but we should never forget how much more we can teach if we

engage our students’ interest. I searched for books that were great read-alouds that I could make

come alive with my voice. I didn’t much care if they were on a list of “Great Books” as much as

I cared if they allowed my children to connect with the conflict, pull prior knowledge, and enjoy

themselves, while feeling the book. My choice books were books that I enjoy reading, the ones

that pulled me in and made me feel. These books do appeal to both boys and girls and inspire

emotion and meaningful discussion. My goal was to create “lap time”. ‘Children come to us


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with varying backgrounds and levels of family support. We have found it necessary to provide

the “lap time” that many of our children have missed out on’ (Boushey, G & Moser, J., 2006).

Ideally lap time is a safe and fun learning moment that involves conversation. With that being

my goal, why would I ruin great read-alouds with test preparations?

The third grade Ohio Achievement Assessment is a fact of life if you are a nine year old

child attending elementary school in Ohio. ‘The truth is that although very few people seem to

enjoy taking tests, they can actually do better on them if they try to make them a little bit fun.’

(Chin, 2004) Standardized tests help students get ready for middle school, high school, and

college. They focus on vocabulary and have a specific format. There are three types of

questions on the OAA: multiple choice, short answer, and extended response. (Rozakis, 2007)

There is inevitably a critical thinking process in choosing your answers that involve

subconscious selection. To succeed on ALL multiple choice items one should use the following

steps:

*Read the question. Restate the question in your own words.

*Predict the answer.

*Reread all the answers and make your choice. Look for the answer that matches your

prediction. If you can’t find it, go back and re-think the question.

(Rozakis, 2007)

These steps assume the test-taker has control of their cognition or “metacognition”; this is the

ability to think about one’s own thinking. Can we “teach” our students how to think? Yes, ‘the

development of metacognitive control or regulation begins when children are taught the use of a


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learning strategy’ (Eme, E., Puustinen, M.,& Coutelet, B., 2006) Short answer and extended

response questions require the students to interpret information and draw conclusions. The way

we can “study” or prepare our students for standardized tests is to practice with them. This

modeling must be done at the thought process level not just pencil-paper time consuming test

prep. ‘Children develop the capacity for metacognitive regulation through interaction with adults

and more capable peers who initially assume responsibility for monitoring progress, setting

goals, and planning activities.’ (Eme, E., Puustinen, M.,& Coutelet, B., 2006) This is the

foundation of my project, the Think Aloud. Teaching students how to think through teacher

involved dialogue, this is not to be mistaken with a discussion. ‘People in dialogue need each

other. They collaborate with one another, striving to comprehend ideas, problems, events,

feelings. Working together, partners in dialogue call one another forth as they seek to

comprehend the world.’ (Peterson, R.& Eeds, M., 2007) It is a teacher’s role to facilitate the

environment and the transactional process of interpretation so that the students can be successful

when they are required to independently monitor their own comprehension.

Discussion

We have no time to play we must get ready for this test!! Haven’t we all heard that

before? Why not play to get prepared for the test? Every read aloud I chose has a section

devoted to “testing”. I took past third grade OAA tests and modeled my own questions using

their vocabulary and question format. These questions are meant to assess the student’s reading

comprehension but that is not the purpose of my testing section. I scan my testing and coding

sections along with the graphic organizers and then download them onto my Smartboard. The

Smartboard allows my small group or whole class to be visually engaged but also interact with


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my activities. The testing questions are used to guide my Think aloud dialogue. We talk about

each question. What is it asking us to do? How can we find the answer? Can we ask that

question another way, in our own words? There are also some answer choices we know aren’t

right. Can we prove they aren’t right and take that choice away?

Most importantly, I set up our community. In order to boost my students’ self-confidence

and help them believe that they are the creators of meaning, we have some unstated rules. There

is no judgment or right or wrong answers. Now, before you tell me there definitely is a wrong

answer to a multiple choice question, let me restate that there is no wrong answer that you can

prove. We often pretend we are police detectives and we support our answers from clues in the

story or from our past experiences. If we can’t “lock-up” the right answer, we need to look for

more clues or eliminate some of the suspects. We call the testing questions the “Brain Drain”

questions and we need our collective brain to get them right. When teaching them “guessing”

strategies, I often use funny responses on the multiple choice choices to lighten the mood.

Nobody owns one question; we are working through them together so this is never done in a

question ping-pong pattern. We have fun. They know when I read them a book that they do not

have to worry about what they are going to have to do afterwards. I want to eliminate their fear

so that it will not get in the way of their process of reflecting while I am reading. In the

philosophy of a community, it is safe to take that risk. Their process is valued and their insight

always surprises me.

There is an Accelerated Reader number on all of my read-alouds. My school district uses

the Accelerated Reading Program. This is a computer program that is set up for individual

student use. Every student has their own personal login # and password. When the student logs


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in, they can take a short multiple choice comprehension test on a book that they have read or

have listened to. The program then keeps track of the student’s results. These results can be used

by the classroom teachers to monitor student comprehension. This is available for me to judge

my student’s listening comprehension growth, as the year progresses.

For my students, SLOWING down the reading process and letting them get a good look

at how skilled readers construct meaning from text is a priority. The goal for each Think Aloud

is to verbalize the thought process and to enhance my children’s comprehension. I am the

facilitator of their understanding and am available to employ and reinforce comprehension and

test-taking strategies. These strategies may become the skills that will empower them to cross the

finish line and become efficient readers. Phonics can give students another strategy to win the

reading race.

Comprehension is the most important part of reading but not the only skill a reader needs

to make meaning from text. Phonics is an identified, essential skill children need in literacy

acquisition. ‘Phonics instruction can help all children learn to read. It can help children decode

words that follow predictable relationships and it particularly benefits children with risk of

learning disabilities. (Blevins, 1998) Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and

specific spelling. Decoding words aids in the development and improvement of word

recognition. The more words a student can recognize, the easier reading becomes for them. The

easier reading becomes the more fluent they can read. The more fluent they can read, the more

time they can devote to comprehending what they read. (Blevins, 1998) However, how you

teach phonetics is debatable. Drilling young children on learning isolated letters and sounds is

never developmentally appropriate phonics instruction. (Nyberg, 1998) Readers do not need to


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know the terms such as: diagraphs, dipthongs, and morphemes. The goal of phonetic instruction

should be phonemic awareness and the ability to make sense of words to build reading self-

confidence.

Discussion

Each read-aloud that is incorporated into my project includes a “coding” section. These

are words that appeared in the read-aloud that have predictable sound relationships. As stated

previously, these activities are scanned and displayed through the Smartboard. These words are

primarily used to spark conversation that allows the students to discover the words by identifying

the sounds they know. Together we can identify and attend to the sounds to read the words. My

goal is to build their self-confidence and have them learn new words. ‘Children who understand

the mechanics of reading have an advantage.’ (Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook Sixth

Edition, 2006) This mixture of phonics and meaning of words can enhance comprehension. The

components of reading: phonics, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension are often

displayed as stair steps. Whenever, I hear those terms I am reminded of the book, If You Give a

Mouse a Cupcake. This book is one of the many in a series of these children’s books that have a

circular pattern. If you give the animal this, then he’ll ask for this. It continues until you are

right back where you were in the beginning, giving that mouse a cupcake. That is how I

implement my phonics instruction. If I show my students a sound, they might be able to decode

a word. If they can decode a word, they’ll probably be able to read it. If they can read the word,

they’ll want some more. You’ll have to give them a whole book of words. If they read that

book, they will see more words. If they see more words, they’ll want to find some of their

sounds. And they do. This is an activity that I do after-reading and my students look forward to


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doing this. They go up to the Smartboard and they find a sound they know. They keep looking

for those hunks and chunks and working on it until someone says, “Hey, that word is ______.”

Making the phonics instruction relevant but keeping them engaged is my goal but this phonics

instruction also has benefits for the OAA. When my students are coding, they are also looking

for prefixes and suffixes that can be boxed off the root word and sent to Santa. This improves

their ability to understand new vocabulary.

Participants

The students that I work with are in kindergarten through third grade. I am the Title I

reading teacher at Dresden Elementary so all of my students have qualified to receive Title I

services. Title I is a program funded by the federal government. All students are assessed in my

building using at least two different forms of assessment. These assessments are then used to

form priority lists. In every classroom, the students that have performed the lowest will be

entitled to receive thirty minutes a day of small group instruction. It is typical for my students to

be special needs or at risk because of a learning disability. It was their need that inspired me to

find a better way to teach them to be efficient readers. These students have come to me with

many barriers but also with untapped potential. I do NOT want to be one more roadblock in

their way to become lifelong learners. I want to show them the short cuts and the scenic routes,

so their trip means something to them. With this in mind, I do focus on our community and

making the activities and books as inviting as possible. This should not be a unique practice

saved for only children with special needs. All students in kindergarten through third grade

could benefit from the read alouds/think aloud activities.

Materials


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My classroom is very small. It consists of a large rug, my books, and me. There are no

desks or chairs. The lessons require a very short list of materials.

*Read alouds

*Smartboard, computer

*Motivational incentives/materials

*Inviting, comfortable surrounding

Procedure

Day One-Students come in and are introduced to the new book. We investigate the title and

cover. The students can share connections and or predictions they have about the book. I will

tell them the author and illustrator’s name. I model my enthusiasm for why I chose this book.

What attracted me to it. There is no set time that I have allotted for before-reading conversation.

I will facilitate the students so that our dialogue stays focused on relevant topics and making

connections between their lives or other books that they have read. Afterwards I will read the

book with gusto.

Day Two-Before reading the same book again, I will open with a conversation starter. It may

ask them what their favorite part or illustration was and why or it could be if they ever felt the

way the main character did at some point in the selection or did the main character remind

anyone of another character or a person they know in real-life. They know that they have to give

us clues so we have their background knowledge as well. I will read the book for the second


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time. With the time that is remaining we will pull up the “Testing” section on the Smartboard.

We start the “Brain Drain” questions. I ask them if they know how many points the first

question is worth. They have been trained to know that multiple choice questions are worth one

point, short answers are worth two, and extended response questions are worth four points. I will

read the question off the Smartboard. If it is a multiple choice question-I will read all the

choices. The students will discuss if there is a choice that is a “No Brain” choice that can be

eliminated. If we are in agreement, then someone will go to the Smartboard and get rid of that

choice so that we have a better chance of predicting the correct answer. We frequently have to

“Go back and get proof” from the story to make sure our prediction is correct. If we feel we

answered the question correctly someone gives us the allotted points. At the end of our time

together, my students are rewarded for their participation. There are never punishments in my

room but you may not get something cool if your didn’t use your “voice” to help us.

Day Three-Read aloud the book (YES AGAIN!) We will finish the “Brain Drain” questions and

do the coding. As stated before, students take turns finding hunks and chunks they know in the

words. We also talk about where that word was in the story and if anyone can create a new

sentence with that word. Sometimes there are opportunities to stretch out our sentences by

having each person add more to it or add a describing word to make the sentence juicier. At this

time we look at the graphic organizer and plan our attack for the next day. Have we seen a

graphic organizer like this before? What is it asking us to do?

Day Four-We do the graphic organizer together. I will frequently read another book, for

entertainment only that allows the students to make a connection to something previously


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learned. For example, when we did Rosa, I read them a graphic novel about the Montgomery

Bus Boycott.

Conclusion

My goal, like many educators, is to serve my students to the best of my ability. With that

goal in mind, I created my activities to help them become efficient readers and test takers. It is

important to me to do this in an inviting and engaging style, set in a safe community. This can

be done by utilizing quality read alouds, modeling OAA format, and inspiring think aloud

dialogue.


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References

Blevins, W. (1998). Phonics from A to Z. New York: Scholastic Professional Books.

Boushey, G & Moser, J. (2006). The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Bradbury, J. (2003). Children's Book Corner: A Read-Aloud Resource with Tips, Techiniques and Plans for Teachers,Librarians And Parents Level Pre-K-K. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries

Unlimited.

Chin, B. A. (2004). Wiley Keys to Success: How to Ace Any Test. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Eme, E., Puustinen, M.,& Coutelet, B. (2006). Individual and Developmental Differences In Reading Monitoring: When and How Do Children Evaluate Their Comprehension? European

Journal of Psychology of Education , 91-115.

Nyberg, J. (1998). Storybook Phonics. Parsippany, New Jersey: Good Year Books.

Peterson, R.& Eeds, M. (2007). Grand Conversations: Literature Books in Action. New York, New York: Scholastic Inc.

Reid, R. (2009). Reid's Read-Alouds: Selections for Children and Teens. Chicago: American Library Association.

Rozakis, L. P. (2007). Be a Super Test-Taker. New York: Scholastic Inc.

Trelease, J. (2001). The Read-Aloud Handbook. New York: Penguin Books.

Trelease, J. (2006). The Read-Aloud Handbook Sixth Edition. New York: Penguin Books.

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Using Quality Read-Alouds and OAA Format to Inspire Think ... Web viewUSING QUALITY READ-ALOUDS AND OAA FORMAT TO INSPIRE THINK ALOUD DIALOGUE. 14. ... word recognition ... Each read-aloud