Shelagh Rose’s First Year Seminar students engage in Think Aloud to begin reading an academic, peer-reviewed article. They are learning to leverage their own and their peers’ prior knowledge, and to actively problem solve with academic texts. Ultimately, they are empowered to bring their own perspectives, questions, and concerns to college coursework.

Students in Cindy Ryan’s academic literacy class practice Thinking Aloud in a whole class metacognitive conversation. These students have shed self-consciousness about being confused, and may instead ask each other, “How did you figure that out?”

The students in Ericka Senegar-Mitchell’s class are weeks away from graduation. Many are heading directly into careers, with biotechnology high on the list. As students interview each other about a technical paper they have just taken up, we recognize a class in which confidence and competence have emerged from consistent challenge and support.

These community college students range from high school students working on their diplomas to adults working on their English. In small groups and as a class, they push each other to read closely and defend their ideas with evidence from the text.

This college level General Chemistry classroom is abuzz with inquiry. The syllabus states that “lecture time is to challenge your understanding of new information, and, more importantly, for you to grapple with this information along with your peers.” In this session, we see 55 students engaging with the electrochemistry concepts they previously encountered through reading and lab, driving their understanding forward through questioning and collaborative sense-making.

Many of the students in Pam Moore’s Life Science class are English learners or former English learners. Pam wants her students to read texts for science inquiry. We see Pam model her reading processes spotlighting the questioning. The students take up reading, posing questions, and sharing them with each other and with the class.