Making Thinking Visible Using Thinking

RoutinesAnna Moore

St. John Catholic School

Agenda

• Introduction

• Explain Visible Thinking

• Introduce Thinking Routines

• Find out how they are used in the classroom

What is it?

Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters.

The goal is to cultivate students' thinking skills and to deepen content learning by building a culture of thinking.

http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html

A Culture of Thinking

A culture of thinking refers to your classroom environment. What are the values, habits, and language of your classroom?

What are your students thinking dispositions and metal management?

Culture of Thinking

Thinking Dispositions- have to do with students’ attitudes, values, and habits of the mind concerning thinking and what the classroom environment can do to promote productive patterns of conduct.

Mental Management (metagcognition)- students’ thinking about their own thinking processes.

A Culture of Thinking

What kinds of thinking do you value and want to promote in your classroom?

What kind of thinking do your lessons force your students to do?

MYST

• Me: How do I make my own thinking visible?

• You: How do I make my students’ thinking visible?

• Space: How is space in the classroom organized to help facilitate thinking?

• Time: How do I give thinking time? How does thinking develop over time?

MYST

• How am I (Me) making my own thinking visible for students? How and when do I display the habits of mind and thinking dispositions I want students to develop?

MYST

• How is the thinking of students (You) made visible to me and the rest of the class? When and where do students share their thinking? Do I have a sense of what my students are thinking about on our current topic of study? Am I able to see their thinking develop? How can I get more access to this thinking? As a class, do we examine and discuss the thinking of others?

MYST• How is thinking displayed in the physical

setting of my classroom (Space)? Could a visitor to my classroom see students' thinking? What artifacts of thinking do I put up on the wall? What records of thinking do I keep? Who has access to these records? Are the ideas and issues we are exploring and our efforts at developing understanding on display in the classroom? How can I use the space to make my thinking and that of students visible for examination, discussion, and reflection?

MYST

• What are the opportunities for thinking in my classroom (Time)? How much time do students really spend in meaningful thought around the issues and topics we are exploring? Are homework assignments and classwork infused with opportunities for thinking? How can I increase their thoughtfulness?

How to Make the Invisible Visible

Questioning- we have to understand as teachers that we must ask students to think. We must go beyond the short straight answers.

Modeling an Interest in Ideas

Modeling an interest in ideas- ask questions that do not have a predetermined answer, this is extremely helpful in building an engaging classroom culture.

Example: 5th grade, Boston Tea Party- talk among yourselves and pretend you are colonists. What are your options? What choice would you make? Why?

Example: 9th grade- What is the story? What is the other story? How do you know the story? Why know or tell the story? What is the power of the story?

Construct UnderstandingShift away from knowledge-based

questions.

Ask students to connect ideas, make interpretations, focus on big ideas, and to extend ideas.

Example: 1st grade, teaching to use senses. The teacher wanted to make sure that students knew their senses but also know the information they could collect from that senses. Students felt an object in a box. The teacher then asked, what do you know just by feeling it? What do you not know just by feeling it? What does feeling it make you wonder?

Facilitating and Clarifying Thinking One of the most important questions with thinking routines: What makes you say that?

What does that tell you then?

What do you think you were basing that on?

Listening

You must listen to the answers. Do not become focused solely on the skill but listen to your students’ responses.

If you are not sure what a student is trying to explain continue to question them, asking them to explain.

Stick with them, do not just pass off the answer because it was not the one you were looking for.

Documenting

Record students’ thinking on the whiteboard, chart paper, or anywhere else in the room.

Post-it notes work very well.

How Can I Use This?

Routines

Simple structure that can be followed across grade levels.

Routines to UseReasoning-Centered

What makes you say that?

Claim/Support/ Question

Think, Pair, Share

Artifact

Rumors

3-2-1 Bridge

Chalk Talk

Think, Pair, Share

Present a question to the class.

Have students turn to their partner and share their answer.

Students can volunteer their partner to present their answer if time permits.

Artifact

• Chose an artifact to represent a topic.

• What is your artifact?

• Why did you choose it?

• What does it say about your question?

• What does it not say?

Rumors• Write one thing you want to learn in

science on a post-it with your name.

• Turn and share it with a partner and then that partner takes your post it and moves on.

• Did you hear that Taylor wants to learn why President Lincoln was assassinated?

Micro Lab• Present a question about the content.

• Each person in the group gets 2 min to talk, no one else talks.

• 30 seconds to reflect.

• Next person gives their opinion.

• I use this after reading a passage in a story or after a great class discussion.

• End with whole class discussion.

Chalk Talk

• Present a question. What are the affects of global warming?

• Students post their answers on a chart piece of paper. Other students can comment on their answers.

Exploring Viewpoints

• Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

• Present a picture or an idea and have students imagine they are a person in the picture.

• What do they see, how do they feel?

Exploring Viewpoints

Questioning and Investigating

I See/ I Think/ I Wonder

Think/ Puzzle/ Explore

Creative Questions

Word, Sentence, Phrase

See, Think, Wonder

• What do you see?

• What does that make you think?

• What does this picture make you wonder?

Think, Puzzle, Explore

• What do you think you know about this topic?

• What puzzles you about this topic?

• What are some ways we could explore this topic?

Word, Sentence, Phrase

• Have students read a passage.

• Pick out an important word, sentence, and a phrase.

• Students share and post their word, sentence, and phrase.

Poem/Reflective Journaling

Observing and Describing

Beginning/ Middle/ End

Listening: Ten times two

Looking: Ten times two

Colors, Shapes, Lines

Beginning, Middle, End

• If this artwork is the beginning of the story, what might happen next?

• If this artwork is the middle of the story, what might happen before? What might happen next?

• If this artwork is the end of the story, what might the story be?

Looking and Listening Times Two

• Present a picture or a piece of music to the class. Give them a set amount of time to write everything they see.

• Then ask them to stop and repeat looking for something new this time.

• Have students share what they found.

Comparing and Connecting

Headlines

Connect/ Extend/ Challenge

CSI

I Used to Think, Now I Think

HeadlinesSummarize the main idea in a few words.

An easy way to assess if students understood what they read.

Example: After reading a passage on Christopher Columbus I gave each student a piece of paper to write their headline.

One student’s wrote “Columbus’ Disappointment”

CSI

Color, Symbol, Image

Example: After reading “Sea of Courage” on student’s CSI was blue, a bone, the beach.

I used to think, now I think...

• Have students explain at the end of a lesson what they used to think and how the lesson changed their thinking.

Great Resources

Making Thinking Visible By: Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison

The Thinking Classroom By: Shari Tishman, David Perkins, and Eileen Jay

Checking for Understanding By: Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Upcoming Conference

Martin Summer Institute, June 13-14

http://www.martininstitute.org

annadhshc@yahoo.com

Thank you!