Get your students to talk to you and to each other, to make their thinking visible around their improvisation strategies, to self-assess, and to provide peer feedback.  This starts with modeling -- say and do the kinds of things you want your students to say and do.  Here are some other ideas to get students to express themselves verbally, musically, and in writing:

Turn & talk

• Pair students with partners.  When they're new to improvisation, they may be more likely to talk to one person than to the whole group.  Later, it's a time saver -- they can express themselves and get right back to the music.  Over time, students may start to talk to partners without your prompting.

Musical dialogue

• Encourage and allow students to use musical examples as part of articulating their improvisation strategies, self-assessing, and giving peer feedback.

Self-efficacy chart

• Invite students to rate their self-efficacy, on a scale of 1-5, before playing improvised solos.  Use a community space like a white board or a SmartBoard, or have them write it down just for themselves.  Afterwards, invite students to rate their self-efficacy again, and to explain to a partner or to the combo why it changed or stayed the same.

• Use exercises like this to help students track their own progress.

Community improvisation strategy (or vocab/musical element) space

• Designate a space where students can write down and refer to improvisation strategies they are using or plan to use.  Put up a paper poster or create a document to display on a SmartBoard..  Leave it posted all the time or re-post it each time a combo meets.

• Before students have many strategies, create a similar space for musical elements characteristic of jazz.  Use it as a space for students to "collect" vocabulary and key concepts (e.g., swing, root notes, etc.), or even "I Can" statements (e.g., "I can swing 8th notes").

Conversation starters and probes

• "From where are you going to/did you get your musical ideas?"

• "What is/was your strategy?"

• "Tell me something from your last solo that you're going to work on in your next."

• "Tell your partner what your strategy is/was.  Tell them with words, singing, and/or playing."

Conversation stems for students

• "I'm going to get/I got my musical ideas from..."

• "My strategy is/was to..."

• "One thing I noticed about my last solo was..."

• "One thing I noticed about a classmate's solo was..."