Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners (Jossey-Bass Teacher)

Product Information

Includes questions, exercises, and discussion prompts to inspire reflection by individuals and teams After reading a story, small groups of students are provided with an illustration from the text. (This activity would work using a quote from the text as well.) by a small set of “ Core Routines” that target different types of thinking, are easy to get started with, and are commonly used by teachers in many disciplines and with learners of many ages,

The key point is that any strategy should be memorable enough for you to easily recall where you are in the discussion. I’ve been working on an ultimate list of ALL 100+ thinking routines as a handy instant reference guide for educators, guides and creatives working with Visible Thinking. Get inspired!I first learned about visible thinking about six years ago when I read Making Thinking Visible. A colleague had recommended the book to me and I realized that I had been using specific visible thinking routines for years after observing a colleague who was an expert at getting her students to think about their thinking. I had been integrating elements of visual thinking into our design thinking and inquiry-based projects as well as our curation process, research process, and brainstorming process.

Routines that support students in building a deeper understanding of topics or experiences by asking them to analyze, evaluate, find complexity, and make connections. As students make sense out of their ideas, they can begin to organize information visually. This might be something like a spreadsheet or a graph or it might be an outline or a slideshow. As teachers, we can help students organize information by providing easy-to-use graphic organizers. For example, you might provide a flow chart to understand systems. You might have students create Venn Diagrams for comparing and contrasting information. Many of these small graphic organizers work well as a way to add structure and accountability to breakout room discussions in virtual class meetings. However, they can also work well in a more traditional lesson as an initial anticipatory set. 2. Encourage students to create visuals to make sense out of current learning

A Message From PZ's Co-Directors

You can choose to have students look at the art with or without a lens for looking. You can select random artwork and ask students to make any connection they want to or you can identify a specific focus. Students can use visible thinking strategies as a way to make sense of new learning and to generate questions that they will explore as they research or design their own experiments. Here, a teacher will provide a video, a graph, or a photo that work as a provocation for deeper learning. This might tie into students’ prior knowledge but it might also spark their curiosity. In a virtual science class, students might watch a video of a natural phenomenon or go off-screen and observe their natural world. The teacher can provide one of Harvard Zero’s visible thinking strategy, such as see-think-wonder. Students answer the questions:

Factual or supplemental information can be added as and when required. Thinking routines allow information to be offered to the group in small amounts and at appropriate times, rather than as a lecture by the guide. Much more than just an instructional guide, Cultures of Thinking in Action offers readers a reflective journey into their own teaching, leading, and parenting while providing the foundation and concrete strategies needed to create and develop a culture of thinking for all learners. This book:

A routine is simply defined as a sequence of actions or pattern of behaviour that is regularly followed or rehearsed. Thinking routines are tools specifically designed to help, support and guide mental processes or thinking. They consist of short, easy to learn and teach steps that get used in a regular fashion. In some cases, teachers might go more open-ended. Students might look at a photograph in social studies and answer, “What is going on in this picture?” However, you might provide a graphic organizer with the five senses and have students focus on what they would see, feel, smell, hear, and taste in that moment. A more advanced option from Making Thinking Visible is the Step Inside routine, where students watch the video or look at a picture and then answer: You will also see your students develop a deeper understanding of the content when it is linked to a piece of art. It creates a visual peg and/or another way to connect to or build onto the concepts already known. It is brain-based teaching at its best. What about math? In the United States, public school educators working in schools with a free and reduced lunch rate of 25% or more OR educators working primarily with students who attend these schools. Art teachers could have a pivotal role in demystifying math: showing how it is integral to creating art and not something only used in math class. There’s a variety of ways teachers could make connections to the CCMP:

In this activity, small groups of students construct original poetry. Poems are written by combining individual student’s responses to a selected painting, sculpture, photograph, portrait, image, or artifact with their classmates’ responses. Visible Thinking has been developed over a number of years by researchers from Harvard’s Project Zerowith teachers and students. Visible Thinking is essentially a ‘ broad and flexible framework for enriching learning’ by fostering deep thinking and a better understanding of content. Central Idea There are some great online concept mapping tools. I’ve been using CMAP Tools for well over a decade, when I first learned about concept mapping through studying DH Johnassen’s notion of technology as mindtools. However, this program can be a little wonky and it looks pretty outdated. In some cases, students will want to sketch out their concept maps in a sketch-note style. But whatever the tool, the goal is for students to make sense out of their learning by showing the connections between ideas. It almost functions as a snapshot of the synaptic connections in their minds. Students can record these on a three-column organizer: the outer columns are used for lines for each different voice and the middle column for what the lines they might say together. Students work in small groups or pairs to write and perform the poems. Sensory PoemIncidentally, for auditory learners, the same routines apply to listening to a piece of music. The routines are classified into categories of critical thinking skills Project Zero calls thinking dispositions .