Chapter+6+Monitoring+Comprehension

Monitoring Comprehension: The Inner Conversation
Pages 77-89

Harvey and Goudvis explain the importance of hearing "the inner conversation" so that readers can adjust their reading comprehension processes. They note, "Reading comprehension is an ongoing process of evolving thinking. When readers read and construct meaning, they carry on an inner conversation with the text. They hear a voice in their head speaking to them as they read -- a voice that questions, connects, laughs, cries. This inner conversation helps readers monitor their comprehension and keeps them engaged in the story, concept, information, and ideas, allowing them to build their understanding as they go" (p. 78).

On pages 78 and 79, Harvey and Goudvis encourage teachers to make their own inner voices transparent for their students by thinking aloud as they monitor their comprehension. This strategy has a great deal of support in the literature. When teachers model their own thinking by thinking aloud, they are equipping students to adopt the same habits. As it turns out, students also benefit from the think alouds of their peers.

__Professional References to Extend Your Learning__

 * Baumann, J. F., Jones, L. A., Seifert-Kessell, N. (1993). Using think alouds to enhance children's comprehension monitoring abilities. //The Reading Teacher, 47//(3), 184-193.
 * In this article, Baumann, Jones and Seifert-Kessel report on a study of think-aloud strategy instruction with fourth graders. They found that the children who were taught to monitor their understanding by using a think aloud technique acquired and then applied various reading comprehension strategies. When students were allowed to discuss their monitoring with peers and collaboratively think aloud to build meaning, they reported richer strategy use than a control group of students who were not taught to think aloud to monitor comprehension. This article provides examples of student conversations but also outlines the strategy that these researchers used to teach thinking aloud.

Harvey and Goudvis also acknowledge that "reading is a social act" (p. 82). They recommend an instructional technique called "Read, Write and Talk" that is grounded in the work of Palincsar & Brown (1984; 1986). Here are two great references to extend your understanding of the research that supports this method.


 * Palincsar, A. S. & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. //Cognition and Instruction, 1//(2), 117-175. Retrieved from []
 * Palincsar, A. S. & Brown, A. L. (1986). Interactive teaching to promote independent learning from text. //The Reading Teacher, 39//(8), 771-777.


 * In 1984, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar and Ann L. Brown published a famous study that compared two conditions of reading comprehension instruction -- a typical, didactic classroom (the control) and a classroom where students were taught a method to discuss text with one another that the authors named //reciprocal teaching//. Grounded in the understanding that learning happens collaboratively and that novices learn when a more knowledgeable teacher scaffolds their learning activities, Palinscar and Brown found that reciprocal teaching with an adult modeling the sophisticated use of comprehension strategies resulted in significant improvement in the quality of summaries of texts, and questions about the texts. Students who learned reciprocal teaching also performed better on standardized tests of reading comprehension. The authors also found that students who learned to summarize, clarify and question with reciprocal teaching transferred their skills to other tasks that required similar skills.

__**Technology Tip**__
Harvey and Goudvis recommend the use of sticky notes on a piece of paper on clipboards as a low-tech way for students to record their thoughts as they monitor comprehension. Students can then share their sticky notes with peers in conversations about the text (pp. 78-79). This is a very practical and totally accessible method. (Sticky notes are technologies too!) That said, for teachers looking to integrate web-based technologies into their comprehension monitoring instruction, there are free, web-based tools available that could extend students' learning in new ways.

[|VoiceThread] Instead of using sticky notes, students could jot down their ideas in a web-based writing space (e.g., Wikispaces or [|Google Docs]). With thoughts typed in front them, they could then record a verbal think aloud by using the voice and/or video recorder built into the computer or an external device (e.g., iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad with SoundNote app, FlipCamera, or even just an inexpensive digital voice recorder). They can then upload their audio/video recording to VoiceThread. Once uploaded, students can listen to their peers' VoiceThreads and comment on them. This activity can be done with small groups, but it can also open up the conversation to everyone in the class. Students can hyperlink their VoiceThreads to an online portfolio, where teachers and parents have access to this digital record of the child's thinking. The child, too, can go back, and listen to his or her thoughts as a way to notice the strategies he/or she has used and to build greater monitoring capacity.

Important Theoretical Extension for Understanding Students' Inner Conversations
Harvey and Goudvis's work emphasizes the importance of teaching children to hear, notice and respond to the inner voice that guides their construction of meaning from text. It is essential, however, for teachers to know that their students' voices and the conversations they have with themselves, and with others about the texts they read, will always be shaped by a constellation reader-specific, text-specific and context-specific factors.


 * Sperling, M., Appleman, D., Gilyard, K., & Freedman, S. (2011). Voice in the context of literacy studies. //Reading Research Quarterly, 46//, 70-84. Retrieved from[| http://www.jstor.org/stable/41038746]
 * Sperling, Appleman, Gilyard and Freedman (2011) offer an essential discussion of the many ways that the concept of "voice" has been used in literacy studies. In their article, they do not address the idea of voice as a tool for monitoring comprehension, however, students' voices - the ones they hear as they construct meaning -- are shaped by their experiences, by the contexts in which they have lived, grown and learned, by the people in their lives, by their cultural practices and by the ways that texts activate funds of knowledge that cannot help but be culturally grounded. We think this is an important article to read as a supplement to Harvey and Goudvis's chapter on monitoring because Sperling et al., beautifully articulate the situated nature of voice and its many meanings in reading, writing and oral communication. Moreover, it provides additional context for understanding the "Noticing and Exploring Thinking" activity that Harvey and Goudvis propose (p. 81).


 * As teachers, we must understand that when students monitor their inner conversations, they each hear different voices that have been shaped by the worlds in which they live. To truly support the development of monitoring strategies, we must not minimize the importance of context, culture and the many discourses that shape our understanding of who we are as readers, writers and learners.