The protocols provide accurate “snapshots” and even “videos” of the ever-changing mental landscape that expert readers construct during reading. These protocols were categorized and analyzed by researchers to answer specific questions, such as, What is the influence of prior knowledge on expert readers’ strategies as they determine the main idea of a text? (Afflerbach, 1990b). The lengthy scripts recording these spoken thoughts (i.e., think-alouds) are called verbal protocols (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). These strategies are described in a fascinating qualitative study that asked expert readers to think aloud regarding what was happening in their minds while they were reading. The opposite of mindless reading is the processing of text by highly effective readers using cognitive strategies. Struggling students often mistakenly believe they are reading when they are actually engaged in what researchers call mindless reading (Schooler, Reichle, & Halpern, 2004), zoning out while staring at the printed page. When these strategies are directly taught to and modeled for struggling readers, their comprehension and retention improve.
Cognitive strategies are the mental processes used by skilled readers to extract and construct meaning from text and to create knowledge structures in long-term memory. If the struggling readers in your content classroom routinely miss the point when “reading” content text, consider teaching them one or more of the seven cognitive strategies of highly effective readers. Such rote applications of these procedures represents, in essence, a true oxymoron-non-strategic strategic processing. To assume that one can simply have students memorize and routinely execute a set of strategies is to misconceive the nature of strategic processing or executive control.
0 kommentar(er)
