Pause It
Pause It, refers to the habit of listening to yourself while reading, and stopping whenever something doesn't look or sound right. This then, requires the reader to do some thinking to make sense of the text. More fluent readers employ this strategy independently and almost seamlessly, while beginning readers may need more scaffolding, i.e., someone to say, “Stop.” “What did you just read?” Did it make sense?” As young readers work their way through unknown text it is easy for them to misread a word or phrase. This can result in a significant loss of meaning. Just as Armbruster, Lehr, and Osborn stated, “Comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand what they are reading, they are not really reading.” Developing the habit of self-monitoring assists in both accuracy and comprehension of what they read. When faced with a website or webpage, the readers need to make meaning of, and think about whether or not this site will give them the information they are looking for. They will need to look at the different parts of the page (text features, graphics, links, captions, headings) and predict where they might lead. Utilizing the Pause It strategy guides them, and stops them from indiscriminately clicking around the page. “Never before has it been more necessary that children learn to read, write and think critically. It’s not just point and click. Its point, think, read, think, click” (Tapscott 1998). Readers learn to pause and think about what they see on the page, asking themselves, “Will this hyperlink or image give me the information I am looking for?”. Another way to use this strategy is to choose three of the links or images that seem most promising and then, to stop and think about each result. If this searching seems to lead away from the original task, the reader will need to recognize that this site may not meet their needs and that they need to try another.