| Body | Think aloud protocols can be an excellent way to cultivate to cultivate the critical thinking skills of all learners. They also help the instructor understand where students are getting stuck. This activity was designed with intermediate students in mind but could easily be tailored to fit novice or advanced learners by selecting simpler or more complex texts.
Objectives:
Learners will be able to:
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Demonstrate understanding of the main idea in a short text
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Verbalize their thinking as they read
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Identify what they know and want to know about the topic before reading
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Identify what they learned after reading
Procedure:
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Begin by selecting a written text for your students that is related to targeted classroom content for your students. News articles, blog posts, short stories, and even social media posts are all good places to begin. For example, to explore fashion and self-expression, you could use a blog post like https://chroniclesofher.com/editors-blog/signature-style/.
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Guided Vocabulary Exploration: Have students form groups of 2-3. Ask that they only highlight all of the words that the know and/or can figure out. Then, discuss three challenging words as a class and help the learners break it down by asking the following questions: 1) Does it sound similar to a word you know?; 2) Is the root or prefix or suffix familiar?; and 3) For character-based languages, is there a radical you are familiar with? What is it’s meaning?
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Pre-reading: Before reading the text, students should complete the K and W parts of the KWL Chart, filling in what they already know about the topic of the text and what they want to know. In small groups, have students share their responses with each other to broaden both their pre-reading knowledge and expand their curiosity. Students may use the sentence starters provided.
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Model the Think Aloud Protocol: Using the first paragraph or first few sentences of the selected text, model a Think Aloud Protocol. As you read aloud the text, verbalize how you are reasoning through the text. For example, periodically stop and summarize, ask yourself what a passage was about, what a word means, what you are wondering, or note if something surprises you.
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While reading: Once you are done modeling, have students read/think aloud themselves. They are welcome to use the sentence starters to help them phrase their thoughts, as well as give them ideas for the types of things they might want to think about. As students are reading, be sure to make yourself available to help students who find themselves stuck, whether that be with comprehension or a particular word.
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Post reading: When students have finished reading, have them fill out the L portion of the KWL chart, writing out what they learned from the text. Again, in small groups, have students share their responses.
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Class discussion: Finally, conduct a full class discussion regarding the think aloud protocol and whether the learners were able to articulate how they know and understand what they know.
Notes:
This activity is included to model a classroom approach that is accessible for all learners in a classroom of mixed abilities. It invites learners to use and build off of what they already know to construct new knowledge. It also invites conceptual processing and allows learners to connect new content to previously learned information.
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