Explaining Their Thinking
Overview
Students explaining their thinking during learning is a metacognitive process that involves actively self-questioning or being questioned while exploring new concepts, and explaining thoughts and reasoning in response. Generating explanations activates prior Background Knowledge and promotes Critical Thinking as students reflect on new content, organize it, make inferences, establish connections, and integrate it into their schema. Students can explain their thinking in a variety of ways including think-alouds, which focus on organically explaining their thought process to other people, elaborative interrogation, which focuses on answering “why” questions of others, and self-explanation, which focuses on using self-talk while writing responses or creating visuals to increase and articulate one's understanding of more complex questions.
Explaining their thinking aloud supports self-awareness and academic language development, particularly important for multilingual learners as it encourages them to reflect on language choices and problem-solving strategies as they articulate their thoughts in an academic context. Student-generated explanations of thinking can also be used by teachers as a formative assessment to monitor students' understanding and address any misconceptions. Generative learning strategies that require students to explain their thinking tap into students' natural Curiosity, and facilitate student Self-Regulation. Research demonstrates that this strategy is most effective when students are prompted with specific protocols or questions, and that prompts should be carefully aligned with target learning outcomes so students avoid reinforcing incorrect approaches or choices.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this teacher models a think-aloud with her fourth grade class to support Critical Thinking and text-to-world connections when thinking through new material.
Design It into Your Product
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Active Learning Strategies
Encouraging young children to draw and to explain their drawings in the classroom, can support the development of Core Academic Literacies.
Visiting places connected to classroom learning provides opportunities to add relevance to classroom topics and deepen understanding through firsthand experiences.
Games support learning as learners engage with new information in fun and informal ways.
Simulations involve students engaging in interactive experiences that mimic real-world scenarios to explore content, practice skills, and solve problems.
