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3. Directed Reading – Thinking Activity Technique
a. The Nature of Directed Reading-Thinking Activity
The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity DR-TA is a teaching technique developed by Russell Stauffer in 1969. It is an explicit teaching technique that
focuses student attention on the purpose for reading. DR-TA encourages students to make predictions while they are reading. After reading segments of a text,
students stop, confirm or revise previous predictions, and make new predictions about what they will read next. The key step in a DR-TA is developing purposes
for reading. Purposes or questions represent the directional and motivating influences that get readers started, keep them on course, and produce the vigor and
potency and push to carry them through to the end. It can be used in any content area and with fiction or nonfiction text. The
DR-TA encourages readers to become actively engaged with the text through a three-step process: sample the text, make a prediction, then read the text to
confirm the prediction. Good readers make and verify predictions as they read. This activity can assist students in developing that skill West Virginia
Department of Education, 2011. The DR-TA is a reading comprehension technique that can be used with
any age group, but is most commonly used with elementary students. This approach works with both picture books and chapter books, and can be done with
individual students, small groups or the whole class. Since it involves predicting what will happen next, DR-TA must be used with a story that is unfamiliar to the
students. However, students should have some background knowledge. The
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teacher needs to prepare for the activity ahead of time by reading the book and deciding in advance where the stopping points will be for each section Schultz,
2010. It is stated in Karp 2010,
The DR-TA is used to foster critical awareness by moving students through a process that involves prediction, verification, judgment, and
ultimately extension of thought. It improves reading and supports readers at all levels. The technique works well for readers at all grade levels and
ability levels, as well with a range of texts. It also allows readers to self- assess their level of understanding prior to continuing or, should the
results prove unsatisfactory, return to the confusing parts for further clarification. As teachers use pre-reading, guided reading, and post-
reading strategies, students will learn, practice, and internalize these strategies that are essential lifelong learning skills for reading, writing,
understanding, and interpreting content specific materials.
Students are administered an inventory of strategies used during in- classroom reading studies. Strategies – pre-reading, guided reading, and post-
reading – are applied to the content area of English literature. This class is designed to give students the necessary skills of previewing and reviewing printed
text, activating prior knowledge, processing and acquiring new vocabulary, organizing information, understanding visual representations, self-monitoring, and
reflecting. DR-TA serves several purposes as follows:
1 Elicits students’ prior knowledge of the topic of the text.
2 Encourages students to monitor their comprehension while they are reading.
3 Sets a purpose for reading. Students read to confirm and revise predictions
they are making. National Education Association, 2002.
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From the discussion above, DR-TA, then, can be defined as a teaching technique that focuses student attention on the purpose for reading which
encourages the students to make predictions while they are reading to make the students become actively engaged with the text.
b. The Teaching Steps of Directed Reading-Thinking Activity
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