Test your understanding of the Self-Monitoring metacognitive reading strategy
Learning Objectives:
Overview:
The final metacognitive reading strategy is to self-monitor your understanding as you read. Strong readers know when they don't understand the text they are reading. This is a good thing. When you know that you didn't understand something, you can go back and decode it.
When you read, you will often come to a stop. This is usually for one of two reasons:
Self monitoring can help you decide what to do next, making the best use of this time.
Go Back, Decode:
One of the reasons we stop is because we didn't comprehend what we just read. This can be for many reasons, but the two most common are:
If the reading is challenging, causing you to read without comprehending, go back and try that paragraph again. Look for keywords and main concepts. Try to decode new vocabulary words from context, highlight challenging passages, and break it down into smaller pieces.
If you stopped because you aren't focusing, try the paragraph again. If you still aren't focusing after a third try, just stop reading for now. You can always come back later.
Wonder:
If you stopped because the passage gave you an idea, made you think of something else, or reminded you of something, good. That's actually an important part of reading!
Books are supposed to remind you of your experiences. That's how they make new neural pathways and connect to prior knowledge.
Books are supposed to spark ideas. That's how you become a part of the conversation and take an active role in your reading.
When you stop to wonder, embrace your thoughts. Let yourself wonder. You'll come back when you're ready. When you do, it will be with more things to consider, which is what makes active readers.
Winnie pulled her little rocking chair up to her bedroom window and sat down. The rocking chair had been given to her when she was very small, but she still squeezed into it sometimes, when no one was looking, because the rocking made her almost remember something pleasant, something soothing, that would never quite come up to the surface of her mind. And tonight she wanted to be soothed.
The constable had brought her home. They had seized her at once, flinging the gate open and swooping down on her, her mother weeping, her father speechless, hugging her to him, her grandmother babbling with excitement. There was a painful pause when the constable told them she had gone away of her own free will, but it only lasted for a moment. They did not, would not believe it, and her grandmother said, "It was the elves. We heard them. They must have bewitched her."
And so they had borne her into the house, and after she had taken the bath they insisted upon, they fed and petted her and refused, with little laughs and murmurs, to accept her answers to their questions: She had gone away with the Tucks because—well, she just wanted to. The Tucks had been very kind to her, had given her flapjacks, taken her fishing. The Tucks were good and gentle people. All this would have been swept away in any case, however, this good impression of her friends which she was trying to create, when she told them what had happened to the man in the yellow suit. Had they really given him the wood in exchange for finding her? They had. Well, perhaps he wouldn't want it now. Mae had hit him with the shotgun. He was very sick. They received this news with mingled hope and horror, and her father said, "I suppose the wood will be ours again if that man should…that is, if he doesn't…"
"You mean, if he dies," Winnie had said, flatly, and they had sat back, shocked. Soon after, they put her to bed, with many kisses. But they peered at her anxiously over their shoulders as they tiptoed out of her bedroom, as if they sensed that she was different now from what she had been before. As if some part of her had slipped away.