Think Ahead Masterclass Video
Transcript of the Video
Hi everyone. This is Judy from ReadingWise. This is a short video, the first in a series of four videos, where I'll talk about and explain the four ReadingWise mega -skills of reading comprehension.
These four mega-skills are really designed to help you think about you explore that question, 'what makes a good reader? What makes good readers? How do they do it? How do they really understand what they're reading?
These skills they try and help you unpick what happens when you read, what goes on in your head, what deepens your understanding of what you're reading, and helps you really explore these four mega-skills and how you might use them to develop your own reading skills, and you become a confident and successful reader.
Let's have a go. Shall we look at the first mega-skill together?
Think Ahead Mega-skill: Overview
So here's our first mega-skill, and it's called Think Ahead. The clue's kind of in the title. It really helps us think about what we're reading, and think ahead of time what we're reading, how we understand what we're reading, what the characters are doing, what's happening, the plot, those kind of things. It is the first mega-skill and as you begin to move through the ReadingWiseWise Comprehension programme, you will be introduced to each one of these skills in the sessions that you're exploring and reading. And as you get really, really good at them one by one, and really deepen your understanding of them they will become more automatic, and actually, suddenly you'll be realizing, doing, using these skills really, really automatically when you read. But first of all, we're going to try and make them really explicit, really understand what they're all about and how they can help you really develop your understanding of reading.
So here is Think Ahead. And if you've explored the programme already, you'll see that Think Ahead has three little mini-skills attached to it. We'll come to those in a minute. But let's think about Think Ahead, let's think about why that is a mega-skill, what's so good about how it helps you read, but here's some key things it does for you. What it helps you do is really begin to think while you're reading, about slowing down the reading process, so that while you're reading, you're thinking as you're going, you're making predictions as you're going, and as you're reading, you're asking questions, not kind of out loud, but in your head, you're raising questions about what you're reading. So instead of rushing through and finishing and really coming to the end, it slows down that process, and it helps you link to your own thoughts, your own knowledge, your own experience, and bring those to what you're reading. So as you're reading something, thinking about a place, and you're trying to imagine what that place looks like, and you're trying to visualize it in your head when there's a description, 'Wow, I wonder what that would be like if I ever been somewhere like that myself?' So it slows down the process of reading, helps you think ahead and start making predictions about what the characters what the plots might be, and really, really helps you raise those questions. So Think Ahead is our first mega-skill. Let's go and have a look at some of those mini-skills that sit underneath it.
Think Ahead Mini-skill 1: Think Aloud
So here is there are three mini-skills, Think Aloud, Keywords and Prediction Connections. The first one of those, of course, is our Think Aloud, and it does exactly what it says. It helps us think aloud, not out, but aloud in our heads. So as we're reading what it's helping us through saying actually, here's this section of the text, here's the section of the story, and as you're reading it, it is prompting you at the end of the different section to ask yourself a few questions, and those little bubbles that you click on that raise questions. 'What is the character doing now?' 'What are you thinking about now?' 'Have you met anybody like this before?' Those little questions just help you begin to connect with what you're reading. They'll help you, essentially, think aloud. It's that simple. Why is that good? Well, actually, it helps us really, really understand and slow down, not rush through, but really think quite carefully about what we're reading. And of course, that really helps us understand the characters, the plot, what's happening in the story, and helps us make a prediction about what might happen next. Key skills of reading.
Think Ahead Mini-skill 2: Key Words
So welcome to our second of our little mini-skills of that big Think Ahead mega-skill. And our second is called Key Words, and it kind of does exactly what it says on the tin. Key Words is about selecting and really thinking about key words and phrases in the stories or the non-fiction or the text that you're reading, whatever they might be. And to really get you to stop and consider and to think about things that make that stand out when you're reading, and get you think about, well, what does that make you think about? What does that phrase make you think about? What does that word make you think about? Do I really understand it, and really help you think as you're reading about some of those key words and phrases that you'll find in the text. And of course, what we do is we give you a little bit of multiple choice. It will help kind of give you a few ideas. And of course, it might be something that you think about, something completely different to what we thought about. And that's really important, because when we read, we draw on our own experience. We draw on our world, the things that we know and things we think about, and they help us make sense of what we're reading, what we're trying to do, in Key Words, is really give you an example and really help you really, really use that strategy of questioning and really kind of asking that question, what does this make me think about? And again, that really helps us develop our understanding as we read. So that's our second little mini-skill, Key Words.
Think Ahead Mini-skill 3: Prediction Connections
So welcome to our third little mini-skill, and this one's called Prediction Connections. This is the third mini-skill in our Think Ahead mega-skill. Our Think ahead mega-skill, of course, is all about really slowing down the reading process of getting to read us to really think and question what we're reading, to help us really think about relating it to our own experience, our own knowledge and understanding and Prediction Connections does that really, really well. It's quite a fun little mini-skill. What it does is it asks us quite fun questions to help us make connections between our own experience, our own thinking, our own knowledge and understanding, and what we're reading. So it asks simple little questions like this one, like this one on the page, 'What do you usually do if something is on your mind?' So it's comparing what you do to what the character is doing in the story. Do you just try and ignore it? Do you keep it really to yourself? Do you share and talk about with your closest friends? What do you do?
So if you're thinking about connecting to what you might do in that situation, it really helps you to really, really understand and look at what the character is doing, and go 'wow, the character did something completely different there that's quite interesting,' or how the character did exactly the same as me. So it helps us to connect to what's happening in the story. It helps us draw on our own knowledge and understanding our own experience, to really make sense of what we're reading in a fun and engaging way. So a great little mini-skill that helps, again, us deepen our connection and our understanding of the story and the text that we're reading.
Conclusion
There you have it. That's our first mega-skill. Think Ahead, a fabulous skill to use as we develop our reading. It's great in so many ways, and of course, it is one of those skills that helps us really slow down the reading process. It helps us raise questions as we're reading, helps us reread, encourages us to reread and be thinking as we're reading about our own experience, our own connection to what we read, which deepens our understanding while we're reading, and helps us make predictions about what might come next. So a fabulous skill to use as you're reading, and of course, use it in the ReadingWise Comprehension programme, but also use it wherever you're reading, whether you're reading online, you're reading a website, a piece of homework, reading a text, reading lyrics of a song, whatever it might be this is a skill you can use to really raise questions and really deepen our understanding in whatever we read. The other thing to do is to ask yourself, really, how is this helping you as you're using it, as you're getting used to this mega-skill? How is it helping you develop your understanding? Is there one of the mini-skills perhaps that you use a lot, perhaps from Think Aloud, perhaps that's really helping you raise questions in your head. So I would encourage you, as you're moving through these skills and are becoming more automatic for you to really think about which elements, which bits of the skill are really helping deepen your understanding of reading, and helping you to make meaning of what you're reading.
So always good to reflect on how you saw this, how you're finding this and which particular mini-skills you like best. Not just that, maybe is the one that's the most fun, but which one is really helping you develop your reading and turning you into a successful and confident reader.
