30-30-30 (Think-Aloud Scaffolding)

This activity from Jeff Zwiers' Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6-12 (2004) is called 30-30-30 because it divides a text into thirds, and the reading and thinking are scaffolded as you move through the text. In order to get through 100% of a text with enough time for you to model and for the students to both practice and do alone, make sure the passage isn’t too long. This 30-30-30 uses the “gradual release of responsibility” model first developed by Pearson and Gallagher (1983).
Elementary teachers have used “think-alouds” for decades in their reading instruction. The teacher and her students look at a picture in a children’s book, then the teacher says to herself (and to her students), “Hmmm, I wonder what this picture is about? What’s happening here?” She continues as she reads, asking herself questions—about the text, about her own thinking, about the author’s intent. The purpose is to model for the children the kinds of thinking that goes on in a good reader’s mind, to push the young readers to begin to be metacognitive.
Effective secondary teachers use think-alouds too, even if they don’t realize they do. This exercise helps students focus on the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves as they read aloud by making think-alouds the point of the lesson.
Here are the steps:
1. Make sure you have a list of reading strategies available to refer to as you model. If you have found that students are not using a specific strategy (like summarizing, questioning, using context clues, etc.) then use that strategy as you model your thinking aloud.
2. Start by modeling some prereading strategies by thinking aloud (predicting the author’s purpose, asking questions of the title, graphics, headings, etc.). Ask the students to also do some of this questioning. Besides modeling what good readers do, you are building background knowledge.
3. Now, for the first 30% of the passage, read and think aloud while your students listen and perhaps take notes. You might even mention the strategy you are using as you think aloud to yourself (and to the students).
4. For the second 30% of the passage, continue to read aloud, stopping occasionally at places where you want students to think or question. Ask students to work in pairs to actually think aloud. You might want students to share some of their think-alouds with other pairs or the class. This would also insure that they are actually using the specific strategy you have discussed. Continue with this teacher-directed reading aloud and stopping for the middle 30% of the text.
5. For the last 30% of the text, have the students read silently, taking individual notes on sticky notes and pasting the notes in the margins where they stopped to think silently about their reading. This would also make a great “share with your elbow partner” activity, so students could compare the spots where they stopped to think as well as the questions or ideas they thought about. If you think you need to give a little more structure to this independent work, you could put a minimum on the number of thinking stops the students would need to make.
6. Finally, as a postreading activity, do another think aloud where you model the process of putting it all together, either summarizing or determining the author’s purpose.