Literacy Matters Winter 2022

Self-regulation Lastly, self-regulation is the tool readers use to develop metacognition (Mason et al., 2013). When readers self-regulate, they pay attention to which strategies are working and which ones are not, adjusting as needed. The main elements of self-regulation are planning (make a plan of action before reading and setting a goal), monitoring (monitoring one’s comprehension while reading), and evaluating (evaluating the final product and determining if the goal was met). With an understanding and applying of these theories, teachers can help students become independent, active agents in their reading. Students’ repertoire of comprehension strategies should expand. Additionally, students will feel more empowered to overcome reading challenges andmake decisions independently as they read. Culturally Responsive Teaching Teachers enter the classroom with their personal experiences and cultural backgrounds (Gay, 2018). Furthermore, most teachers in the United States are from the dominant, Eurocentric culture. In contrast, the students they serve may be from differing cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds than their own (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Therefore, teachers should intentionally incorporate components of students’ experiences and cultural and linguistic backgrounds into reading instruction by employing CRT. According to Thomas (2019), “Culture in relationship to ethnicity, race, and gender factors are often unaccounted for during instruction, but utilized to account for differences in reading achievement” (p. 104). Culturally Responsive Teaching is defined as “using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (Gay, 2018, p. 36). When teachers employ CRT, they empower students, help students recognize their assets, and intentionally allow students to see themselves within the instruction. According to Gay (2018), CRT has four critical aspects: care, communication, curriculum, and instruction. Table 1 highlights the meaning of each component of CRT as described in Gay’s (2018) Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (3rd edition), its importance, and how to exhibit each component in the classroom. For my doctoral research (Woods, 2020), I trained third-grade teachers at a school with predominantly African American students to implement think-aloud instruction. Table 2 displays an overview of the think-aloud workshops for teachers (Woods, 2020). First, I conducted interviews with the teachers to get an idea of their prior knowledge of transparent, think aloud instruction. During the first session, I administered the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) (Schraw & Dennison, 2004) so teachers could see which metacognitive and self regulatory behaviors they exhibit as readers and learners.

I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an Xbox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go. While reading this chapter aloud to students, the teacher could use a think-aloud to demonstrate how to determine the meaning of the word ordinary , for example: “Ordinary is a word I do not use often. In the chapter, our character explains the activities he does that he thinks make him ordinary, like eating ice cream, riding a bike, playing ball, and having an Xbox. I know several other kids who do the same thing. If the character does what other kids do, that’s normal. So I think the word ordinary means normal. I’m going to replace ordinary with normal to see if it makes sense…” In this example, the teacher does not simply tell students what ordinary means; the teacher verbalizes their thought processing, so students hear what proficient readers do while reading. The teacher demonstrates that good readers do not skip what is not understood but use strategies to help them comprehend. Thinking aloud while reading aloud helps improve students’ reading comprehension (Pergams et al., 2018). There are three theories in this framework that are important to understand to provide effective think-aloud instruction. In no particular order, those three theories are metacognition, cognition, and self-regulation. Metacognition In reading, metacognition is the conscious effort to control one’s thoughts while reading; essentially, it is thinking of one’s thoughts (Flavell, 1979; Smith et al., 2017). Strong metacognitive skills result in understanding how and when to use strategies while reading. When implementing think-aloud instruction, teachers demonstrate how proficient readers use strategies to overcome challenges while reading and ensure comprehension. Some metacognitive reading skills students may be taught to use are reading slowly and carefully, pausing to reflect on reading, rereading, and guessing the meaning of unknown words (Manalu &Wirza, 2021). Cognition Cognition is the actual processes and strategies used by readers (Forrest-Pressley & Waller, 1984). The most effective reading instruction is embedded in a repertoire of reading behaviors and strategies (e.g., monitoring comprehension, activating and connecting to background knowledge, asking questions, inferring and visualizing meaning, determining importance, and summarizing and synthesizing; Harvey & Goudvis, 2017). Cognitive behavior is situated based on one’s experiences, culture, and frames of reference. The more strategies readers know to use and which ones work best for them, the stronger they become in reading. Reading becomes less tedious and more effortless and automatic.

Literacy Matters Feature Article

Additionally, in the first five weeks of training, I used Duffy et al. (1988) and Ness (2014) to provide the background information

Literacy Matters | Volume 22 • Winter 2022 | 33 |

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