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

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It seems like we are in the throes of curriculum reforms designed to transform education. However, these efforts generally neglect the vital role classroom and school culture play in promoting learning. Any curriculum, good or bad, will sink or float on the culture of the classroom in which it is enacted. Culture matters not only to realize curricular goals, but also as a shaper of students’ development as powerful thinkers and learners. Complete the first line of the template and then fold the paper so that the written response is hidden. Option: Post the 60-second sketches alongside the original artwork. Provide students an additional opportunity to do a gallery walk and discuss or compare/contrast the sketches. What I would like to share is how we can integrate thinking routines encourage students to visualize and make sense out of their learning in virtual environments. 1. Use visuals to spark new learning Routines that help students find coherence, draw conclusions, and distill the essence of topics or experiences.

You will be amazed at how even your quietest students will respond automatically and freely to the art. Students work alone, in pairs or in small groups. Their goal is to observe works in a collection (a gallery of images) of art. Then, while perusing and examining the art, the students brainstorm and record words or short phrases inspired by what they see that relates to the theme. Visitors can explore and discuss artworks using thinking routines from Visible Thinking as the structure to guide their thinking and to help them practise and develop certain skills, such as careful observation, thoughtful interpretation and understanding different viewpoints. The museum teacher, guide or educator facilitates and guides this process combining elements of Visible Thinking with certain museum education practices.

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Unlike other strategies designed to cultivate thinking skills, thinking routines are short and memorable with only a few steps based on carefully crafted questions – For example, one of the more popular routines ‘ See-Think-Wonder’ encourages individuals to practice slow-looking and observe, before processing and analysing and then questioning – ‘What do you see?’ ‘What do you think is going on?’ ‘What does it make you wonder?’ 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. A tableau is a silent group of students in frozen action: the students communicate a key moment or idea by creating a composition through body language and facial expression just like characters frozen in a painting or on a statue. After reading a story, each group would identify a series of 3-5 events to retell or summarize the story. In their groups, the students collaborate to determine which big ideas or events they want to communicate and then develop a tableau for each one. All of the tableaux presents itself in a sequence to the rest of the class in a slide show format. How do I ensure that the tasks I assign students remotely are worthwhile and will actually produce learning versus just keep them busy?

Ask students to imagine that he/she is a cook getting ready to prepare a favorite dish (such as popcorn, a sandwich, pizza) and think about: What ingredients would you need? How would you make it? What would you do first, next? 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. Of cours there are many other possibilities for the use of thinking routines and distance learning than just these two. Around the world, educators are coming together as a community to share their practices and help others. Some of these that might be helpful are:

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Thinking routines can be used across a variety of contexts and environments from schools, universities, private institutions and corporations and, of course, museums. They are not subject-specific either – thinking routines have a wide appeal and application across a variety of disciplines including arts, history, maths and science contexts. Visible Thinking Routines range from more observation-based routines such as ‘ See-Think-Wonder’, ‘ 5×2’ and ‘ Colour, Shape, Line’ which encourage people to look carefully, to more narrative-focused and creative ones such as ‘ Beginning, Middle, End’ and ‘ Step Inside’. I will often suggest that math lessons begin or end with a related visual image and an Artful Thinking question such as: what math do you see in this image? You might also use the W hat makes you say that ? or C laim, Support, Question routines.