Monday, July 30, 2007

Think Alouds and Online texts

I love teaching think-alouds, but I've never really thought about teaching them for online texts. As a matter of fact, I've never really thought about teaching any strategies on online texts. I know that there are differences in online texts and print texts, but with a little modeling and good teaching of the strategies involved in think-alouds, I think students should be equipped with what they need.

I understand that we need to show them how to process information and evaluate the quality of context, but I think we should be doing these things already. Who believes everything they read in a book, newspaper, or even see on the news? We should teach them how to evaluate content knowing that people can be biased. I personally believe that channels like Animal Planet and other science channels are biased when it comes to evolution and how they speak of that theory as fact. I try to teach my two children how to think critically about what they are hearing.

I liked the list of strategies that strong readers use and agree that these should be taught by modeling and scaffolding.

1 comment:

Dave Koppenhaver said...

You might also find that kids were more motivated to learn the same strategy if you did it on computer as opposed to a text, at least sometimes. You might also, taking what you learned in Teacher as Researcher, explore whether there is difference in attitude, engagement, achievement based on use of tech for reading instruction.