When are students ready to move on to Stage 4
Students have mastered STAGE 3 when…
ACCURACY WITH "I THINK THAT MEANS..."
They are quick and convincing with their ITTM statements
- they unpack all the pieces
- they stay with the sentence
- they identify the ‘who’ in the sentence
- they use gestures as shortcuts
- they acknowledge their own possible roadblocks during ITTM
- they can use the four sources of information to attempt to clear roadblocks during ITTM
- look for clues in the sentence
- look for clues in the words
- what sort of word is it
- use what you know
FOCUS AND ENGAGEMENT
Students show willingness and enthusiasm for the accurate processing of meaning throughout the lesson.
Moving on to Stages 4 and then 5
Don’t be in a hurry to move on to Stage 4. While there are more things that you can do to develop “thinking while reading”, Stage 3 and ITTM is the foundation for this; the most important part. Until students are truly fluent with this you are not really helping their development by loading them up with new, even more challenging cognitive requirements.
Remember that habitualising a new mental strategy takes a lot of practise and over learning. If you are getting bored with ITTM or the students are getting bored it is almost certainly to do with flaws in your implementation rather than the students having achieved mastery.