Think, Think, Think; and then Think some more

          When first presented with this idea of Think Aloud while reading, I thought, I got this!  Unlike the last activity this was something that I was familiar with.  I took an entire, semester long, class on Explicit Instruction; and I was good at it.  The thing that keeps jumping out at me though is not how good I am but how good the student gets when they do this thing.  I selected "Theresa" again, she and I now have a reading relationship and she is willing to be my guinea pig in these studies.  Probably because I go into letting her know this is a trial for me and not for her.  As a student in a behavior focus program I find it important to let her know that she is in the right.  She struggles academically but more because she hasn't had a consistent education than anything else and I'm hopeful when I meet with her to give her a small amount of personal success.
          I didn't have a book chosen for this.  She is a high school student so I knew it would be further reading than a picture book.  So I have a stack of books in my office that are on my list to read for another class, adolescent literature.  That seemed an appropriate stack to pull from.  I knew we probably wouldn't read a ton so I wanted something that we could grasp quickly and learn from.  I pulled off "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" a National bestseller by Mark Haddon. 
          I started things off with my reading aloud first.  I went along just naturally, pausing as I should to read aloud.  Not realizing of course that there was a better course of action and I wasn't taking it.  What I should have done, is given her a copy of the text while I did this.  Asked her for her feedback as I released.  Instead I pushed through, content with what I was doing and not reflecting in the moment on if she even had any idea what I was doing.
          The reason I bring that to the forefront is that I wasn't clear on what I was expecting from her.  I thought aloud, did it as a perfect instructor should do, inferring and questioning.  Then she took over and just read.  I had to stop her a paragraph in and explain again, oh wait clearly it was for the first time, on what I wanted.  At that point she seemed to grasp what I was wanting.  I explained that the reason for doing this was when we read we think those things anyway, thinking it aloud makes it clear in the mind what we are looking for.
          I coudn't ask for a better test subject.  She is not interested in pleasing me, just doing what is asked of her.  That helped me locate the mistakes that I made much easier.  I'm excited to go forward with this kind of thought process though.  I think that Think Alouds do a great job of slowing the reader down and finding what can be pulled out of the process.  I'm hopeful that "Theresa" and I will be able to work again in the future.