Think aloud – unleashing a child’s mind
Meeta Mohanty
Think Aloud is an effective strategy for teaching and learning as students are encouraged to verbalize their inner speech while they think their way through a problem. This gives an opportunity to teachers to understand the thinking of students and observe how they process ideas, assimilate information, and the strategies they use while problem solving. It is a strategy that can be effectively applied to all subjects and reveals valuable insights about student’s meta-cognition.
Applied to a reading and writing classroom, think aloud can be useful for varied functions:
- Students can verbalize their purpose of reading
- Strategies they use while problem solving like during word-attack
- Stance selected while reading
- Schema selection before reading and writing
- Understand process writing – how they write drafts and edit them
A sample think aloud is given in the box alongside, which highlights the strategies that different students use to decipher the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
The author works with Pearson Longman and is currently involved with curriculum development and teacher trainings. She can be reached at meetaprabir@gmail.com.
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