Thinking Reader: Improving Reading Vocabulary and Comprehension of Students in Grades 5-8

Thinking Reader is a software program for improving the reading vocabulary and comprehension of students in Grades 5-8. Thinking Reader offers a choice of nine novels with a range of difficulty appropriate for middle school readers. With Thinking Reader, students read novels on computers and respond to prompts that support seven comprehension strategies (explained in detail below). Thinking Reader allows for individualization of instruction. Teachers can customize the amount of support to each student by choosing among five levels. The leveling system varies the representation of the strategy task, students' response options, and the availability of the animated coaches. Students can progress from responding to highly structured strategy prompts (Level 1) to independently selecting their own strategies (Level 5). Teachers are encouraged to use Thinking Reader in a three-phase instructional routine based on the developer's guidelines and commonly recommended reading pedagogy of before, during, and after read ding activitie es Figure Thinking Reader has features that can be tailored to match a set