Abstract of

Think-Aloud Mysteries: Using Structured, Sentence-by-Sentence Text Passages to Teach Comprehension Strategies

Lynn Alleen Smith

This article describes an enjoyable, intuitively grasped, learn-by-doing activity that uses general to increasingly specific sentences describing a mystery topic. This technique helps teachers assist students to bridge the gap between foundational skills—such as phonemic awareness, letter patterns, and sight words—and the acquisition of a variety of comprehension strategies.

Think-Aloud Mysteries were devised to allow struggling readers to focus completely upon comprehension strategies without having to deal with complex text passages or extraneous decoding issues at the same time. However, they have turned out to be a powerful, efficient, and effective tool for introducing comprehension strategies to all students. Several research-based approaches contribute to their power:

• Think-alouds, which make thought processes transparent

• Scaffolding, in which teachers model an activity then gradually withdraw support

• Direct explanations of comprehension strategies

Think-Aloud Mysteries also present a writing problem that compels students to determine hierarchies of details, a fundamental skill for outlining and in studying.

Abstract from Smith, L. (2006, May). Think-Aloud Mysteries: Using Structured, Sentence-by-Sentence Text Passages to Teach Comprehension Strategies. The Reading Teacher, 59(8), 764–773. doi: 10.1598/RT.59.8.4