Acquiring Cognitive Tools

The authors of "Reading for Understanding" reinforce the idea that reading is problem solving. They suggest that for students to increase their comprehension they need to have a wide variety of tools and specific strategies for solving any confusions and problems that come up when they read. These tools need to vary so that when different types of text are encountered they can pick and choose strategies to help them glean meaning from the subject. If students are not able to successfully read for comprehension from academic texts they will eventually give up.

The mental toolbelt for comprehension has four elements:
questioning
predicting
summarizing
clarifying

The goal is for students to independently use these tools to gain meaning from any texts. This requires practice. So the students first were introduced to using the tools with fairly straightforward and easily read texts. Individual and group work was repeatedly done. One way to do this was to have students explain to the class what they did to summarize, how they knew they needed to clarify something. By sharing, the students came to understand the strategies that worked for them and also opened up the idea that other students in class could be a resource.
Power and gatekeeping texts were explained and specific instances were explored such as SAT's, .

Teachers used The Think-Aloud Process to model problem solving. The master reader reads a text they have never seen before. Out loud they use Predicting, Picturing, Making Connections, Identifying a problem, Using Fix-ups. Some questions would be:

I predict...
In the next part I think...
I think this is....
I picture...
I can see...
This is like....
This reminds me of...
I get confused when...
I'm not sure of...
I didn't expect...
I think I need to ( reread or take some other action to help comprehension)
Maybe I'll need to ( read on, or persevere in some other way)


After the teacher models this a few times, the students begin to make check lists as they observe the teacher demonstrate. Whenever they hear one of the techniques used, they make a tally mark, and then the class goes over the checklists. Next the students read in pairs, using think-alouds to share their process. Then students read independently and use checklist on their own reading. They share their self- assessments. Tally sheets are saved in reading logs throughout the year, so that students can look back and review their growth. At the end of the year, students can share reflections on how the think-alouds affected their reading.

The goal of repeatedly doing read-alouds is to make the dialogue second nature and eventually be used unconsciously. According to Gee, at this point they would have mastered this secondary Discourse. They have a cognitive toolbelt for attaining meaning from the text.