domenica 3 aprile 2016

Think Aloud and Reading

An Italian MOOC

"Stop and think. Modeling the process of Online Reading Comprehension Using Think Aloud "

The course which I attended online was run by the University of Florence ( ITALY) THINK ALOUD I DO PRESENTATION
SUPPMOODLE.MED -http://suppmoodle.med.unifi.it/login/index.php- under the tutorship of STEFANIA CARIOLI https://unifi.academia.edu/stefaniacarioli https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefania-carioli-985b4349 who is working at the Department "DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE DELL’EDUCAZIONE E DEI PROCESSI CULTURALI E FORMATIVI" there.

I was given the link to the MOOC by chance as the school where I am currently teaching sent me an email about this course. I had not heard much about THINK ALOUD so I found that it might be interesting for me to learn more about it as the topic of the course was Online Reading Comprehension.

More and more technology is changing our way of working and learning and I thought that I should widen my horizon and get to know more about the methodologies can help our learners to cope with reading difficulties. Reading goes beyond silent reading: reading aloud, thinking aloud and asking questions are now great strategies to understand a text while reading. This is particularly true when we read online and study and search online.

As a teacher of English and German I am always struggling when I need to teach the reading skills in the foreign languages I teach: poor literacy skills and the lack of interest in what we are doing can have a negative impact on our learners, especially when you work in difficult and marginalized areas in your town or city. Reading skills require special techniques and THINK ALOUD is a great approach as our learners become involved in the process of reading and which is based on different levels of reading . The role of the teacher is vital as teachers provide help and support .

The model we were provided and which we learnt about was based on these principles:

Modeling
Guided Practice
Reflecting

Reading will be focussed on the structure of the text ( a poem, an article or an extract taken from a novel, an article on the internet after you have googled the topic you are interested in), the vocabulary and the writer's attitude in the text. What kind of text is it?

The role of the teacher is crucial as he/she will present the main approach to reading and how to grasp the techniques in reading a text or comparing texts. These techniques are required in the process of reading online texts and in selecting texts from the internet for studying .

I was guided in learning about HOW TO WORK with THINK ALOUD but I also searched online and discovered that teachers have been sharing a lot of experiences dealing with reading and reading strategies.

MODELING WAYS - THINK ALOUD ( Video from Youtube)

Resources online and interesting videos for educators

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/evaluating-quality-of-online-info-julie-coiro
http://www.digitalpromise.org/page/-/dpdocuments/microcredentials/mc_evaluatingonlineinfo.pdf?nocdn=1 ( Evaluating online information)

http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/teacher-read-aloud-that-
30799.html

https://www.teachervision.com/read-aloud/video/74734.html

THINK ALOUD ONLINE ( video on the Youtube)

INTERACTIVE READ ALOUD ( Video on the Youtube)

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/theories-of-character

Bringing Close Reading and Text-Based Questions into an Interactive Read Aloud of Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! (K-2) from TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.

THINK ALOUD COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

THINK ALOUD - I DO DEMONSTRATE

VISUALIZE A TEXT WHILE READING

My ideas about reading and thinking aloud
I was asked to develop an activity where students would have to use THINK ALOUD strategies. I had to develop this activity in the fourth week of the course and my idea was to focus on the theme of war by using some texts online : a poem by Ruper Brooke and poem by Vera Brittain and an extract from her autobiography.
I decided to create an online presentation which I am sharing with you.

My approach was based on a close reading of the texts in English by guiding the students about how to work online and also by using
an online tool www.lingro.com for checking meanings and words online while reading.

LINGRO USED IN LANGUAGE LEARNING ( video from youtube)

After reading the texts I would have the students write about what they have learnt and ,in particular, they should compare the two different attitudes towards war. While Rupert Brooke thought that he should be a soldier and also die for his country, the woman's attitude is different as she has seen most of her beloved have died.

This is the text by R.Brooke: I have also used the video with the reading aloud of an English actress as reading aloud means listening to words and trying to understand and guessing.