Guidelines and Student Handouts for Implementing Read-Aloud Strategies in Your Class

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Here is a collection of guidelines, checklists, and assessment tools to start think-aloud strategies with your students from Jeff Wilhelm's book Improving Comprehension With Think-Aloud Strategies, available in the Teacher Store.

Getting Started

There are several strategies, called general reading processes, which researchers have discovered readers use every time they read anything. If your students don't do these things, this is the place to start your think-aloud modeling since these strategies will have the greatest pay-off for them across all reading tasks.

Use these guidelines for getting started with read-aloud technigues with your students:

What Think-Alouds Can Do for Students (PDF)

Starting Points: General Processes of Reading (PDF)

Prompts that Guide Students to Use the General Reading Strategies (PDF)

Guide and Monitor Instruction

Rules of Notice Chart (PDF)
Use this chart to list things that students notice when inferring character.

Flow Chart of Comprehension Monitoring Behaviors (PDF)
Navigate students through self-monitoring reading instruction.

Stop, Ask, Fix: Student Checklist for Monitoring (PDF)
Use this handout when students are ready to take over the process of self-monitoring in small groups or individually.

Guidelines for Determining an Author's Main Idea (PDF)
Use this sample list to write a set of guidelines with your students.

Conversing With the Author Check Sheet (PDF)
Engage students in the author's craft and get them "talking back" about ideas expressed in the reading.

Genre Characteristics Chart (PDF)
This chart provides an overview of some genres (text-types) that are often read by students and the task-specific processes a reader uses to read them. As you introduce a genre, develop such lists of characteristics with your students.

Assessment Suggestions

What to Watch For: Questions to Help Assess Reading (PDF) Use think-alouds for performance-based assessment.

Visualization Check Sheet for Readers (PDF)
This handout can be used as an informal assessment of how students visualize the text.

Break the Pentomino Code! Lesson Plan Based on Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliett
Students will test their comprehension skills by identifying which events actually happened in "Chasing Vermeer." Lesson Plan using Secret Codes to Solve a Mystery.

Graphic Organizer: Story Train
Introduce "beginning, middle, and end" with the story train, a simple graphic organizer for younger readers to identify parts of the story.

Then What Happened? Lesson Plan based on Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin
This activity will help children check their understanding of the sequence of events in Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin

LESSON PLAN	Differences Make Us Special Reading, exercises, and crafts that cover the Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement. This lesson also shows students the value of our similarities...
UNIT PLAN	5-Day Unit Plan for Introducing Nonfiction Use these lessons to provide students with a strong foundation for reading, writing, and using nonfiction.
BOOK INFORMATION	Bob Books Fun! Master Teacher Bobby Lynch Maslen originally hand wrote these phonics-based stories for the students in her own classroom. And soon teachers and parents everywhere were using them for their step-by-step phonics program, short satisfying stories, friendly black-and-white drawings, and small format that's just right for young children!