Chapter 7, page 167
work to see what strategies they seem to be using, as you have done in earlier application problems in this
chapter.
You can also elicit think alouds when you are working one on one with students, perhaps before or
after school. It is quite easy to get students to think aloud as they are reading or solving a problem. You can
use instructions such as those in Figure 7.9 to get students started (see Chan et al., 1992; Chi, de Leeuw,
Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994). As you carefully listen to what your students say as they are thinking aloud,
you will gain insights into which strategies they are using and how well they are using these strategies. You
will have a chance to develop your skill evaluating students strategy use from think alouds in the problem
sets at the end of the chapter.
Figure 7.9:
Instructions to help students think aloud
Example of instructions for older students (upper elementary)
“When you think out loud, you read a short section, and then you pause and say anything at all that comes
to mind as you read the sentences. These questions might give you some ideas of what to say:
--What does this mean?
--Is there anything I don’t understand? Is there anything I wonder about now?
--Is anything different from what I thought before?
--How do the new ideas tie in to things I’ve learned before?”
Example of instructions for younger students (early elementary)
When you think out loud, you read these sentences, and then you stop and say anything you are thinking.
-- You can talk about what the sentences mean.
-- You can talk about something you don’t understand in the sentences.
-- You can talk about any new ideas you have when you’re reading.
STRATEGY INSTRUCTION: MAKING THINKING PUBLICIn later chapters, you will learn how to teach cognitive strategies to your students. Right now, we will
foreshadow one important point about teaching cognitive strategies. An important component of instruction
that promotes strategy development is making thinking public, or making thinking visible (Collins, Brown,
& Newman, 1989). Making thinking public refers to explaining one’s thinking in group and class
discussions.
To illustrate the importance of making thinking public, let’s consider the following hypothetical
example of a discussion in a fifth grade social studies class. One of the teacher’s goals is to help students
infer the meaning of unknown words. In the following passage, the word cargo is unfamiliar to many
students. They read: “Did Sam Adams organize the Boston Tea Party? Although he never said so publicly,
he very likely knew that it was planned. Whoever led the tea party, however, made sure that the protest was
orderly. Only tea was destroyed. No other cargo was touched. The Boston Tea Party was meant to show
Britain that the colonist would act firmly.”
Teacher: What do you think cargo means?
Rafael: I think it means something like products.
Teacher: That’s very close. We could say that cargo is the products that are carried by a ship.
If the teacher’s goal is to help students learn how to infer the meaning of unknown words, did the teacher
succeed? Has Rafael inferred the meaning of a new word, or did he already know this word, or did he just
make a lucky guess? The teacher simply doesn’t know because he hasn’t asked Rafael to explain how he