Howdy future educators!
This year I have been learning a ton of new strategies that I wanted to share with all of you, however I came to notice something. Many of them go back to one thing, Thinking aloud for your students. Think-Alouds, Read-Alouds, and even Problem solving aloud in a math problem helps your students in many ways. For one, it models to them what exactly should be going on in their minds during the activity or assessment. You can model the questions that go through your head, teach them by example how to answer them. In this way, you the teacher, demonstrate practical ways to approach a difficult problem, reading passage or question. This strategy teaches students how to think on their own, and how to learn on their own using their previous knowledge and their inner speech as they think through a problem.
When reading aloud, you can stop from time to time and orally complete sentences like these:
- So far, I’ve learned…
- This made me think of…
- That didn’t make sense.
- I think ___ will happen next.
- I reread that part because…
- I was confused by…
- I think the most important part was…
- That is interesting because…
- I wonder why…
- I just thought of…
Here is an info-graph I made with a colleague about Content-Area Read-Alouds, this is just one of the many strategies you can use to help your students. However, like I said It is important to teach your class to use that inner speech in order for them to think and learn on their own.
Johnson, E.R. (2009) Content-Area Read-Alouds. Academic Language! Academic Literacy! Also retrieved from https://www.teachervision.com/skill-builder/problem-solving/48546.html
Ruby Nicole Luevanos-Clemente
Texas A&M University ’16
December , 2014
aggiedaisies 
I completely agree with what you said! For me I remember in school as a kid teachers doing this in class and it was actually easier to understand thing that were being tought and read when we did things like this! Personally it was easier for me to learn in class and think this method is awesome!
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I like this a lot!
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I do this a lot with my students. I find it works best when explaining processes, and not just discussions. Great job!
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Think-Alouds are a wonderful way to model strategies good readers use. I’ve found that when I’m reading to them they will often stop me and tell me, “Maestra esto me recuerda a…” Or “No entiendo, como es que…” “Yo predigo que..” They’re constantly questioning and giving their input and I absolutely love it!
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