Thinking Strategies
1. Background Knowledge
Using prior knowledge helps readers to:
* activate relevant, prior knowledge before, during, and after reading a text.
* assimilate information from text into their prior knowledge and make changes in that
prior knowledge to accommodate new information.
* relate text to their world knowledge, text knowledge, and personal experience.
* enhance their understanding of text and store text information in long-term memory.
* use their prior knowledge about authors and their styles to better understand text.
* know when their prior knowledge for a topic or text format is inadequate and know
how to create necessary background knowledge.
The Language of Thinking:
"This is just like...."
"This reminds me of..."
"A connection I made to this piece is..."
"This matches the ideas/information in my brain's file folder..."
"A cousin text for this book would be..."
2. Questioning
Asking questions allows readers to:
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clarify meaning.
make predictions.
determine an author’s style, content, or format.
locate a specific answer in the text.
consider rhetorical questions inspired by the text.
focus their attention on important components of the text.
recognize that other readers’ questions may inspire new questions.
The Language of Thinking:
"My Question is..."
"I'm wondering..."
"How... What... Why... When... Who..."
"I wonder... and I found out..."
Thinking Strategies
3. Determining Importance
Determining importance helps readers to:
* identify key ideas or themes as they read.
* distinguish important from unimportant information in relation to key ideas or themes
in text.
* utilize text structure and text features (e.g., bold or italicized print, figures,
photographs) to help them distinguish important from unimportant information.
* use their knowledge of important and relevant parts of text to prioritize in long-term
memory and synthesize text for others.
The Language of Thinking:
"I think this is really important..."
"This is essential... This is extra..."
"When I sort all this out, these things seem to stick..."
"I'll remember..."
"I learned..."
"The big ideas are..."
4. Drawing inferences
Drawing inferences helps readers to:
* use their prior knowledge and textual information to draw conclusions and form
unique interpretations from text.
* make predictions about text, confirm their predictions, and test their developing
meaning as they read on.
* know when and how to use text in combination with their own prior knowledge to
seek answers to questions.
* create interpretations to enrich and deepen their experience in a text.
The Language of Thinking:
"I'm thinking that..."
"I predict..."
"Even though the text doesn't say so, I think..."
"I bet... I knew it..."
"I'm guessing that..."
Thinking Strategies
5. Synthesizing
Synthesizing information enables readers to:
* monitor the overall meaning, important concepts, and themes in a text as they read.
* recognize the ways that text elements fit together to create larger meaning and
themes.
* retell or “pull together” what they have read.
* understand more clearly what they have read.
* capitalize on opportunities to share, recommend, and criticize books they have read.
* respond to text in a variety of ways, independently or in groups of other readers.
* extend their synthesis of the literal meaning of a text to the inferential level.
The Language of Thinking:
"At first I thought...but now I'm thinking..."
"Now I understand that..."
"My thoughts have really changed..."
"Like putting a puzzle together, the pieces of my reading are..."
6. Visualizing
Evoking sensory images is a way for readers to:
* draw conclusions and create unique interpretations of the text.
* clarify and enhance comprehension.
* immerse themselves in rich detail as they read.
* adapt their images in response to the shared images of other readers.
* revise their images to incorporate new information revealed through a text and new
interpretations of that text.
The Language of Thinking:
"In my mind, I can see/hear/smell/feel/taste..."
"My image is..."
"The movie in my head..."
"The picture is on/off..."
"Painting a portrait of my reading, I saw..."
Thinking Strategies
7. Monitoring for Meaning
Monitoring meaning and comprehension encourages readers to:
* identify when text is comprehensible and the degree to which they understand it.
* identify ways in which a text becomes gradually more understandable by reading past
an unclear portion and by rereading the text.
* determine what does not make sense in a text and whether the unclear portions are
critical to overall understanding of the piece.
* understand the processes they can use to make meaning clear. They check, evaluate,
and make revisions to their evolving interpretation of the text while reading.
* identify confusing ideas, themes, and surface elements and explore a variety of
different means to remedy their confusion.
* monitor comprehension in relation to their purpose for reading.
* pause, consider the meanings in text, reflect on their understandings, and use
different strategies to enhance their understanding.
The Language of thinking:
"I'm confused here/I'm clear here..."
"I don't get it/I get it..."
"This doesn't make sense/I understand..."
TS Activities
» Workshop
» GRR (gradual release of responsibility)
» Discourse
» Conferring
» Reflection
» Research Cycle
» Technology