One of the very first anchor charts I made when decorating my first classroom was titled "reading is thinking." Everything I learned about teaching reading during my undergraduate experience emphasized this main point. At an early age, we try to teach readers that reading is more than just decoding words on a page. It is the most complex of processes that involves doing multiple things at once. Although this looks a little different for each reader, every reader should be thinking and responding as they are reading.
Reading comprehension is so much more than simply understanding what you read. Starting at the primary level, we teach students how to find their "inner voice" as they read and respond to texts. We model constantly through read alouds and think alouds to show students how our brains respond. "This makes me think..." "This makes me feel..." "This makes me wonder..."
Readers have to think about what they read. They have to think about the setting, characters, plot, mood, or theme. Readers have to do a variety of juggling as they read. They have to figure out new vocabulary, remember what they read previously, make predictions as to what may happen next, and make connections. In today's classrooms, students are taking notes about their thinking and then we encourage our students to talk about their books in clubs to share their thinking with others.
Over time this becomes a more automatic and natural process, but it is something that takes lots of practice and modeling. Learning how to do all of the juggling is difficult and it is no surprise that this is an issue we see in our secondary students.
