Not All Responsibility is on the Teacher

As you walk into a classroom many times you will hear the statement, "Now students raise your hand when you have found out the answer."  Or you will see the classic procedure of the teacher modeling a few problems here and there and then proceed to have their students complete similar problems or strategies.  Have we ever taken a step outside of our bodies and realized, maybe these students aren't thinking the same way that we are?  Are some of these students thinking of something so brilliant but are restrained from the idea because of the constant motions that we go through every single day in the classroom.  Every day teachers are so concerned with getting through what they need to, to say they have achieved and taught so much of this portion of the curriculum.  When is it time to take a step back and realize there are different ways of teaching other than lecture and assessment.  One of the many different strategies available to use with our students are Think Alouds.  To give a little background for those of you who may not know what this entails exactly, it consists of a gradual release of responsibility onto the students.  AHH!! I know what your thinking...what do you mean giving more responsibility to the students?  I need to make sure that they understand the material!  To your amazement, you will see, more than not, the amazing things that your students are capable of using their brains for and how important it is to allow them to take responsibility for their own learning.  I conducted a think aloud of my own with a group of first graders, in which the focus was to work on their predicting skills.  Lets take a look into what was accomplished.

Prior to conducting my own think aloud, I realized that my students didn't have a lot of prior practice or knowledge of what I wanted to accomplish.  I began with a simple book entitled "Pancakes" by Eric Carle that was engaging and also it went along with the pancake theme that we were working on for that week.  I wanted to focus on a simple type of reading strategy, like predicting, that would be easy to make fun and kind of ween off the responsibility onto my students.  I began with my own predictions on the cover, using a post it note to write "Story about learning how to make pancakes, that takes place on a farm."  I really encouraged the students to use the text and the pictures to help them create a prediction with the story.  Now, the most important portion of this entire think aloud is actually thinking aloud , believe it or not.  Go through the process of why you decided what you did, speak aloud to the students how you came up with the prediction that you did.  I began doing this throughout the first couple of pages.  On page 5, the students were so eager to say what they wanted, I started asking the entire group to brainstorm what they believed would happen on the next page.  We all came to a consensus that entailed, "Momma was gonna make him go get eggs from the chicken coop."  We continued on throughout the next few pages until I stopped asking students what they thought was going to happen next, and they started doing it on their own!  It came to the last portion of the think aloud and the students had taken over all control, even to the point where I wasn't holding the book anymore and they were writing on the post it notes.  The students had taken over, and it was amazing to see their thinking come to life and how excited they were, when their predictions became real parts of the story.

While not all portions of a think aloud can be successful or release a sense of responsibility onto the students, it is important to try and to see how your students process their own type of thinking.  This has to go along with my teaching beliefs in which I have stated throughout my blogs, in which every student has the capability to learn and being able to see how specific students are thinking is a tremendous advantage in keying in who your students are! This also may provide you with an excellent example of a strategy that works for a student who has had difficulty providing answers or skills on paper or in group discussions.  You can also use this strategy to push the thinking of your students, and really drive them to think deeper or further about a subject or topic.  Nearly any type of reading strategy or skill can be shown within a think aloud, and with a gradual release of responsibility onto the students, it can even make your job easier!  I have provided a sample youtube video of a think aloud from a teacher reading a non-fiction story about bugs.  This should provide you with an idea of how this strategy is conducted and the gradual release of responsibility that the students take over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=akGmRgF1jy0