Think Aloud

Purpose:

Assessing and Reflecting

Overview:

Learners verbalize their thinking process, or say out loud what they are thinking, which supports metacognition.

Procedure:

1. Model thinking out loud to make your thinking visible to learners, especially when problem-solving, using meaning-making strategies such as making connections, making inferences, visualizing, determining importance, monitoring comprehension, and making predictions.  
2. When reading aloud, stop at appropriate intervals and orally complete prompts like these:  
   • So far, I’ve learned … 
   • This made me think of … 
   • I was confused by … 
   • That is interesting because … 
   • I wonder why … 
   • I just thought of … 
   • I reread that part because … 
   • I think the most important part was … 
3. Provide opportunities for learners to practice think-alouds with partners as they are engaging in problem-solving or with text.  

Tips:

Think-alouds can provide valuable assessment information about learner thinking as well as opportunities to correct misconceptions or assumptions held by learners.

Source:

Adapted from: https://www.teachervision.com/problem-solving/think-aloud-strategy