What Were You Thinking

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

May 2003

Consider a typical personal reading experience. For example, a recent magazine cover story on women and heart disease. As you read, you encounter a wealth of important information – startling statistics, extensive scientific studies, precautions and recommended actions. While the article perhaps mentions details already known to you, much is probably new knowledge, some of which may even surprise you or change what you had believed about this topic.

As a proficient reader, you engage in reading experiences like this many times a day. Somehow, often without thinking about it, you glide through a piece of text, picking out salient elements and sorting them into a meaningful condensation of the message. As you read, you make sure it makes sense, you double-check your understanding, and you pull your thoughts together – summarizing the gist of the passage; drawing some conclusions; generalizing themes, ideas, and implications.

This process of synthesizing meaning really involves your mind operating on parallel tracks while reading. You are most aware of the “what” of reading – what this article is about, what is most important, what you should remember, what you should do with the information. Yet your mind is also clicked into the “how” of reading – the ongoing thinking you must do to get at the “what.” You think of how this text connects to and extends your previous knowledge on a topic. You think of questions not yet answered as you wonder about what you read. You think about things that are not expressly stated as you make inferences and predictions.

Reading comprehension is, ultimately, the result of the thinking you do when you are engaged with a text.

Students are often unaware of their thinking as they read, especially the thinking that can guide and enhance their comprehension. Strategies that prompt this thinking – and that encourage students to notice “how” they are reading – can strengthen their comprehension abilities as they tackle the various texts for classroom learning.

The strategy
Previous columns have proposed Text Coding as a strategy for stimulating the thinking that comprises the “how” of reading comprehension (see September 2001). Text Coding involves students in marking texts to indicate thinking they noticed in themselves as they were reading. (In the “Hurricanes” example below, an “R” code signifies that a connection to background knowledge was made, “Q” represents a question the reader was wondering about in a point in the text; “V” notes a spot where the reader could especially visualize what was being described; “I” is an inference as the reader adds to meaning based on hints provided by the author; and “?” denotes a point of confusion.)

In addition to Text Coding, Harvey and Goudvis (2000) suggest two-column Content/Process Notes to help students monitor their thinking while reading. Content/Process Notes are a natural extension of Text Coding, and would be an appropriate strategy after students have had sufficient experience identifying characteristics of proficient reading: making connections to prior learning, generating questions, visualizing, making inferences, and determining importance.

Step 1: Model Content/Process Notes as a think-aloud, using a short text that students have previously read but have not yet discussed. Your notes follow a split-page format. Have students draw a line down the center of a page, reserving the left side for important content from a selection and the right side for thinking noticed during reading.

Walk students through this notetaking process, by modeling entries in both columns, as you extract key information for the right side, and recognize what you were thinking in the right side.

Step 2: Assign two-column Content/Process Notes for a text students will be reading as a class assignment. For example, students in a science course are reading a section from their textbooks on hurricanes and tropical storms. Using the Content/Process notetaking system, students keep track of what they judge to be key ideas and facts while logging some of their thinking.

In class, pair students and have them share both what they regarded as most important and what they were thinking as they read.

Step 3: Content/Process notes are especially advantageous for reading assignments that will challenge students. They can be adapted to be completed as partners or in small groups as students problem-solve constructing meaning from difficult material.

Posted May 14, 2003