Literacy Matters Winter 2022

students. While he read a text aloud to the class, he asked questions, listened carefully, and validated students’ responses. He demonstrated his listening by referring to students’ prior responses throughout the text, allowing students to know the value of their participation and responses. Additionally, Craig exhibited CRT instruction by tailoring his instruction to meet the learning preferences of his students and encouraging them to work in small groups. Craig knew his students’ understanding maximized when they could work with a group. He shared in the exit interview of the study that while he circulated the classroom as the students held discussions in their small groups, he could hear the students verbalizing their thinking (just as he did during instruction) as they attempted to help their classmates understand the text. Elisa I observed Elisa’s class in reading centers during one of my visits. Elisa was working with a small group. While reading, the students came across the word transparent and had difficulty reading the word and explaining the meaning. Elisa read the word and told the students that if something is transparent, they can see through it. During our debrief later that day, I brought up what I observed from small groups and suggested how she could have explained transparent using a think-aloud: “The text says, ‘ The butterfly wings are colorful, but the bees’ wings are transparent .’Well, I know when the word ‘but’ is used, there is a contrast. What does contrast mean? …Yes, how two or more things are different; so, if a butterfly’s wings are colorful, what is something that is different than or opposite of colorful? White? Black? Well, I’ve seen a bee before, and the wings weren’t white or black, but they were sort of clear. Is clear different than colorful?” Following the debrief, when I observed another one of Elisa’s reading lessons, they were reading a story. She came across a word that she knew most of her students might not be familiar with within the story. Elisa repeated the sentence containing the unfamiliar word to demonstrate what good readers do. She then began to ask herself questions and demonstrated to the class how to use context clues. While implementing this think aloud, Elisa also showed CRT in her communication when she included students’ frames of reference in her think-aloud and as she taught in a conversational, active participatory manner. She then allowed her students to use context clues and utilized the instructional technique, think-pair-share , where students paired up with a partner to discuss what they thought the word meant and which clues they used. Like Craig’s, Elisa’s instruction met her students’ learning styles because they could work collaboratively to determine the meaning of the unfamiliar word.

on think-aloud instruction and explain the terms metacognition, self-regulation, and cognition. I used a nonsense reading passage (Beers, 2003) to help the teachers know the strategies they use as readers when faced with reading challenges. Often, as proficient readers, teachers do not think about the strategies they use to read and overcome reading challenges. The nonsense passage was used to understand the frustration beginning and struggling readers feel, then use strategies to make meaning of the words. For our last face-to-face session, I modeled how to plan for think-aloud instruction. We used the novels Saving Shiloh (Curtis, 1991) and Bud, Not Buddy (Naylor, 1991). I modeled how to read the text ahead of time and marked in the text good stopping points for think-alouds. For novice teachers and teachers new to think-aloud instruction, think-alouds are best performed when planned. The following two weeks, the teachers were required to stay after school for tutoring; therefore, I sent the teachers self-recorded videos (one for each week) of myself modeling think-aloud instruction while reading selections from Wonder (Palacio, 2012) and Ms. Bixby’s Last Day (Anderson, 2016). Following the training, I observed the teachers’ reading instruction, held debriefs with the teachers, then conducted interviews at the end of the study. Below are ways two of the teachers implemented think-aloud instruction using aspects of CRT in their classroom. The names used are pseudonyms. Craig One of Craig’s focus areas with his class was learning word attack skills; therefore, Craig often used think-alouds for phonics skills and reading comprehension. During his instruction, he would read as usual (in a conversational manner with his students), then pause to verbalize his mental questioning and processing (thinking aloud, allowing students to hear how proficient readers decode unfamiliar words). For example, as Craig read a text aloud to his class, he stopped at the phrase boxed in . Craig used the chunking method: “b…b…ox…box...ed…boxed. I know what a box is… So boxed must mean….” Students said: “Putting something in a box.” Another example where Craig was observed implementing think-aloud instruction was during his lesson on types of sentences. Craig made several self-to-text connections, connecting himself with the sentences and in his explanation of interrogative sentences. The connections he made were in a way the students could relate to. For example, he said, “If my parents ask me a question, it should be something I have to…” [Students: “Answer!”]. Craig also demonstrated thinking aloud using clarification (“Let me see if this is something I can answer…”). This sentence starter models the thinking students should take on whenever trying to distinguish interrogative sentences from other types of sentences. Craig provided example sentences; he used the sentence starter, which eventually transferred to the students. The students observed their teacher’s reading behaviors and eventually mimicked the behavior themselves, asking themselves if the sentences were something they could answer.

Literacy Matters Feature Article

Another way Elisa implemented think-alouds was through questioning to determine the meaning of the figurative language used in a text:

“The students and I were reading [a story], and I showed an example on how to read a phrase, the pudding tasted like a night on the sea . I showed the students how I would question what it

Craig exhibited some components of CRT in his instruction as well. I observed Craig incorporating care towards his

| 34 | Literacy Matters | Volume 22 • Winter 2022

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