Talking Back to Your Text

Another way that Tovani discusses the assessment of students understanding what they are learning is by doing a 'talk back' with the text (pg. 88-89). The teacher can model this behavior by doing a think-aloud. Tovani gives an example of how she had one of her colleagues do a think-aloud and talk back with a biology textbook:

Her Colleague's Pattern of Thought While Reading the Textbook

• Read text in small chunks
• Paraphrase each small chunk
• explain what the text meant to her
• Examine graphics and pinpoint confusion 
• helped her pay more attention to the text when searching for details
• Trusted that pages of written text would explain the graphics
• read with the intention of connecting text and graphic
• Categorized information in her head and then on paper so she could refer to it later
• Reread with a purpose in mind - usually to answer a question or clarify a process

Tovani then turned these concepts into annotation idea, which is basically a model typed onto a sheet that helps walk your students through what they are reading. These annotation sheets ask the students to do things such as "record a what" or "record an analogy". These sheets also encourage students to write down something that is a connection to information they already know, jot down questions, or record a way that the student thought differently while reading.