Making Thinking Visible
Making Thinking Visible – How to promote engagement, Understanding and Independence for learners
---by
Ron Ritchart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison
If one considers just
verbs, Oxford English Dictionary rates the word ‘Think’ as the twelfth most
used verb in the English language! Clearly the word ‘Think’ plays an
astonishingly prominent role in our speech and writing, but for all this usage,
how well do we understand what it actually means to think? Research indicates
that understanding is not a precursor to application, analysis, evaluating, and
creating but a result of it
Why is it that we want kids to think? When is thinking
useful? What purposes does it serve?
The education needs to inculcate the process of ‘Teaching
for Understanding’ and not the ‘Teaching for the Test’.
For students to develop understanding, they must engage in
the actual intellectual work needed to understand the tools and methods of that
discipline. Below are some examples of this work:
Science: making and testing hypotheses, observing closely,
building explanations…
Mathematicians: looking for patterns, making conjectures,
forming generalizations, constructing arguments…
Historians: considering different perspectives, reasoning
with evidence, building explanations…
Readers: making interpretations, connections, predictions…
Thinking doesn't happen in a lockstep, sequential manner,
systematically progressing from one level to the next. It is much messier,
complex, dynamic, and interconnected than that. Thinking is intricately connected
to content; and for every type or act of thinking, we can discern levels or
performance. Perhaps a better place to start is with the purposes of thinking.
It is suggested that knowledge precedes comprehension, which
precedes application, and so on. However, we can all find examples from our own
lives where this is not the case. A young child painting is working largely in
application mode. Suddenly a surprise color appears on the paper and she
analyzes what just happened. What if she does it again but in a different
place? She tries and evaluates the results as unpleasing. Continuing this back
and forth of experimentation and reflection, she finishes her work of art. When
her dad picks her up from school, she tells him about the new knowledge of painting
she gained that day. In this way, there is a constant back and forth between
ways of thinking that interact in a very dynamic way to produce learning.
We might consider understanding not to be a type of thinking
at all but an outcome of thinking. After all, one cannot simply tell oneself to
understand something or direct one's attention to understanding versus some
other activity.
Teachers or parents are rightly stumped when asked to identify the
kinds of thinking they want kids to do because there isn't any to be found in
much of the work they give kidss. Retention of information through rote
practice isn't learning; it is training.
Create three new lists:
1. The actions students in your class spend most of their
time doing. What actions account for 75 percent of what students do in your
class on a regular basis?
2. The actions most authentic to the discipline, that is,
those things that real scientists, writers, artists, and so on actually do as
they go about their work.
3. The actions you remember doing yourself from a time when
you were actively engaged in developing some new understanding of something
within the discipline or subject area. To the extent your first list—what
students spend the bulk of their time doing —matches the other two lists, your
class activity is aligned with understanding. If the three lists seem to be
disconnected from one another, students may be more focused on work and
activity than understanding. They may be doing more learning about the subject
than learning to do the subject. To develop understanding of a subject area,
one has to engage in authentic intellectual activity.
In mathematics, we sometimes call them conjectures or
generalizations.
Some types of thinking we haven't mentioned that seem useful
in the areas of problem solving, decision making, and forming judgments
include:
1. 1. Observing closely and describing what’s there
2. 2. Building
explanations and interpretations
3. 3. Reasoning with evidence
4. 4. Making connections
5.
5. Considering different viewpoints and
perspectives
6. 6. Capturing the heart and forming conclusions.
To help make thinking visible, teachers and Parents have found it is useful to post this list. Even more useful is when teachers use this list to plan units. Students should be engaged in all six of these types of thinking during the course of a unit to develop true understanding. Put another way, if students have not been actively building explanations, reasoning with evidence, making connections, or looking at things from more than one perspective, then chances are that there would be significant gaps in their understanding. In addition to posting and planning, this list of six can be useful for teachers to assess whether students understand. One teacher turned the six into a rubric. Another decided to have students create a “visible thinking portfolio” and bring in samples of their work that demonstrated each type of thinking. The authors of this book then added two more thinking moves:
7. Wondering and asking questions
8. Uncovering complexity and going below the surface of things.
The
Cultures of Thinking research team identified four categories into which
students' strategic responses might be grouped:
1. Memory and knowledge-based strategies. These related to
surface learning and focus on storage and retrieval of information, such as
“Look in books” or “Practice it over and over again.”
2. General and nonspecific strategies. “Think logically” is
clearly related to thinking but it is ambiguous in terms of its actions when
coming from a fifth grader. So too are items like “Problem solve,”
“Metacognition,” or “Understand.”
3. Self-regulation and motivation strategies. “Clear your
mind of all other worries” and “Tell myself I can do it.”
4. Specific thinking strategies and processes. This category
relates to deep or constructive approaches to learning that are about making
meaning, building understanding, solving problems, and making decisions. These
included such responses as “Consider different perspectives” or “Expand on
other questions that may arise from the previous one.”
How we can make
thinking visible?
Tina Grotzer, who directs the Complex Causality Project at
Harvard Project Zero, has designed a series of modules on scientific concepts
that directly confronts students' misconceptions and seeks to reveal their
thinking so as to restructure it. For instance, in a unit on density, students
watch as the teacher drops two candles of equal diameter, one short and one
long, into two containers of liquid. The shorter candle floats while the larger
candle sinks. Students are asked to write what they observed and explain why
the event they witnessed happened. In doing so, students are encouraged to
develop and put forth theories of explanation drawing on their scientific
knowledge. Thus, at the outset students' thinking is surfaced through their
words and drawings. The teacher then removes the candles from the two
containers and switches them. This time the larger candle floats and the
smaller one sinks; an unexpected outcome for most students. Again, students are
asked to write about what they observed and to develop an explanation. Students
then share their reactions and discuss how the simple experiment changed where
they focused their attention. As the discussion unfolds, students become aware
that though both liquids appear the same, they must differ in some respect and
that sinking or floating is not a matter of simple linear causality in this
instance but depends on the relationship between the liquid and the object
placed into it.
The art of Nudging
One needs to notice students' thinking as a way of providing
specific feedback on learning rather than giving generic praise, that is,
comments about good work or a job well done that only tell students they have
pleased the teacher more than providing substantive information about their
learning. One needs to draw students' attention to the thinking they have done.
Commenting on the way the student took the clue from one of the sentence is a
very good way to praise and enable the learning.
So, after teachers become clear about what thinking is and
are able to notice and name it when it occurs, and they create opportunities
for students to think in their classrooms, how can they make the largely
invisible and internal process of thinking visible? There are three primary
ways to make thinking visible, through: (1) questioning, (2) listening, and (3)
documenting.
“What makes something a great question?” Without missing a
beat he said, “Oh, a great question is one that gets us all thinking, including
me.” Through students' questions we get a glimpse into their thinking: What
issues are engaging them? Where is there confusion? Where and how are they
making connections? Where are they seeking clarification? Once one student has
offered up his or her insights or confusion, we often see a ripple effect in
the classroom that helps to produce the excitement and energy needed for
learning.
Why is two times the quantity n minus 1, that is, 2(n – 1),
equal to 2n – 2? A Teacher can ask her students to explain in their own words
why it is true and to develop arguments that will convince a skeptic: “If you
were going to try to prove to someone that this always would work, how would
you do it?” Teacher's intent here is not to review the distributive property,
which students haven't formally been taught, but to focus students on how to
think about the idea of “quantities” as expressed when using the parentheses in
mathematics. She wants students to be able to understand that such quantities
are entities unto themselves that can be operated upon. In doing so, she is
also pushing her students to go beyond arithmetic explanations; that is, trying
to prove something true by simply substituting in a number for n to see if it
works.
Listening
Documentation: This allows students to see that their ideas
have value and exist as contributions to the class's discussion. Also feel a
sense of ownership to it.
When thinking routines are used regularly in classrooms and
become part of the pattern of the classroom, students internalize messages
about what learning is and how it happens. For instance, one of the things you
will notice in many of the routines is that they are designed not to elicit
specific answers but to uncover students' nascent thinking around the topic.
This sends the message that learning is not a process of absorbing others'
ideas, thoughts, or practices but involves uncovering one's own ideas as the
starting point for learning. Learning then becomes about connecting new ideas
to one's own thinking.
Just like teachers have routines for students to line up or
turn in homework, teachers can use thinking routines as a regular way to
promote student thinking and make that thinking visible. Research has shown
that teachers who are successful in developing their students’ thinking use
some type of thinking routines to scaffold and support student thinking. Over
time, these routines become habitual and thinking becomes a seamless part of
the classroom culture. It is helpful to look at thinking routines as: (1)
tools, (2) structures, and (3) patterns.
(1) Tools – In the same way a saw doesn’t work if you need a
hammer, different thinking routines are designed to support the different types
of thinking. Therefore, teachers should first identify the type of thinking
they want students to engage in and then choose the appropriate thinking
routine to serve as a tool to foster the identified types of thinking. These
“tools” not only help teachers teach students different thinking skills, but
they help students become independent thinkers as well. Once students have
internalized the routines, they can use them on their own to support their own
thinking even without a teacher present.
(2) Structures – Each of the thinking routines is made up of
a series of steps that help students develop progressively deeper levels of
thinking as they proceed. In this way, the thinking routines serve as scaffolds
that slowly build student thinking.
(3) Patterns – Unlike strategies which are used only
occasionally, the thinking routines help students develop certain patterns of
behavior. These patterns of behavior help students develop their own thinking.
A teacher or a parent can ask you, “What makes you say
that?” It is useful to recognize when one has made an assumption in one's own
speech, writing, or reflection and ask oneself, “What makes me say that?” When
this occurs, students are acting as independent learners and truly
demonstrating the development of thinking dispositions.
A good test is to ask yourself whether the image/object
engages you. Can you look at it for several minutes and notice new things? Does
it spark your curiosity?
Depending on the image/object, the STW steps can be
completed one at a time (as just described) or by using the three prompts—See,
Think, Wonder— together at the same time. This means students begin by naming
something they “see,” stating what they “think” about it (their interpretations
of that observation), and then raising a question. For instance, “I see a lot
of black in the image. I think that means it is nighttime. I wonder if the
darkness is also reflective of the artist's mood?”
The 8 Fundamental Thinking Skills
1. Observing closely and describing what’s there
2.
Building explanations and interpretations
3. Reasoning with evidence
4.
Making connections
5. Considering different viewpoints and perspectives
6. Capturing the heart and forming conclusions
7. Wondering and asking questions
8. Uncovering complexity and going below the surface of things
Purpose: This routine invites students to connect to their
prior knowledge, to be curious, and to plan for independent or group inquiry.
Think-Puzzle-Explore can provide teachers with a sense of students' current
understanding of a topic and thereby influence the shape and structure of
subsequent teaching and learning.
1.
Selecting Appropriate Content :
Due to the nature of the routine, the
puzzles raised about a topic are usually specific in nature; however the
selection of complex and rich topics will lead to questions that seek more than
the obvious in responses and invite multiple interpretations to be explored.
The subject can range from a big idea, a specific topic in mathematics, an item
in today's newspaper to almost anything that is relevant to your students and
is worth developing an understanding of at a deeper level.
a. Ask, “What do you think you know about…?”
b. Ask, “What questions or puzzles do you have?”
c.
Ask, “How can we explore these puzzles?”
d.
Share the thinking.
3. See: Ask students to spend time
noticing what they see. Sometimes students jump to interpretations, but remind them just to record things they
see – their observations. Students can share ideas in pairs.
4. Think: This is the step when
students do the interpreting. Ask students what they think might be going on in
the image/object, “Based on what we are seeing and noticing, what does it make
us think? What kinds of interpretations can we form based on our observations?”
The goal is to build layers of interpretations about the subject, not simply
name the object. If students provide a simplistic response, ask, “What else is
going on here?” If students provide interpretations that are not grounded in
evidence, ask them, “What do you see that makes you say that?”
5. Wonder: Now ask students, based on their interpretations, what they wonder. This can be difficult to separate from the interpreting step. Students may say, “I wonder if she really is his sister?” or “I wonder if that object in the corner is part of a boat?” Instead, tell them this step is about asking broader questions that push us to look beyond the object. See the example of each step below:
See – I see a lot of black in the image. Interpret – I think that means it is nighttime.
Wonder – I wonder if the darkness is also reflective of the artist’s mood?
6. Share the thinking – This step
is in every routine and will only be described here, in the first routine.
Students can share their thinking in pairs or small groups for each of the
three steps. One idea is to document the thinking by having students record
their ideas on large pieces of posted paper around the room or on sticky notes
for other students to see and add to. Another idea is to have students work
through the three steps in pairs/small groups, and then do a larger share at
the end of those three steps.
Assessment:
See – Look
for student observations that go beyond the surface features.
Think – To
determine how well students are interpreting, check whether their
interpretations are supported with evidence.
Wonder – To
successfully complete this step, students must be able to go beyond writing a
sentence that simply contains, “I wonder” and instead must ask broad questions
that go beyond basic facts to ask about the larger themes or questions of the
discipline.
The listening, reading, and/or documenting of learners'
responses to the first section of this routine, “Think,” provides an
opportunity for the teacher to become aware of the misconceptions students may
have about a topic. Instruction will need to address these misconceptions if
understanding is to be developed.
Asking “What do you know about…?” can immediately shut down
the student who is not confident about the subject, whereas “What do you think
you know about…?” gives permission to have a go, raise possible responses to
the question, safe in the knowledge that you are not guaranteeing that you have
the absolute facts but rather some thoughts about it. Likewise, discussions of
puzzles and wondering help students to be more open-ended in their framing of
questions and can support their curiosity.
What Makes You Say That?
The ‘What Makes You Say That?’ (WMYST?) routine appropriates
and modifies a line of questioning from the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS).
In VTS, students look at art and are asked open-ended questions like “What's
going on in this painting?” Student responses are then followed up with “What
do you see that makes you say that?” That question, modified slightly, becomes
useful in a whole host of contexts both in and out of the classroom. ‘WMYST?’
is as much a discourse routine as it is a thinking routine.
Purpose
Seemingly simple on the surface, this routine, when used as
a regular part of classroom discourse, goes a long way toward fostering a
disposition toward evidential reasoning. Students are asked to share their
interpretations backed with evidence so that others have an opportunity to
consider multiple viewpoints and perspectives on a topic or idea. In this way,
discussions deepen and go past surface answers or mere opinions. Using this
routine, the teacher doesn't present herself as the keeper of all answers but
empowers the entire learning community to examine the reasons and evidence
behind possible explanations to determine their worth. This helps convey a
sense that the correctness of an answer doesn't lie in a lone outside authority
but in evidence that supports it.
Selecting Appropriate Content
There are many occasions in life when it is useful to look
closely at something and develop a personal theory. Students often have hidden
ideas about the way things work, how something has come to be, or why something
is the way it is. To make the thinking behind these theories visible, teachers
need to help students identify the evidence and reasoning that give rise to
those theories. It is only then that the nascent theories and ideas can be
discussed, debated, challenged, and moved forward in a meaningful way.
Consequently, ‘WMYST?’ can be useful when looking at works of art or historical
artifacts, in exploring poetry, making scientific observations and hypotheses,
making predictions in reading, or investigating broader conceptual ideas such
as racism or fairness. Because of its great flexibility, teachers have adapted ‘WMYST?’
for use with almost any subject, especially for surfacing students' initial
ideas when launching new topics but also throughout a unit of study to
continually press for close observation, explanation building, and justifying
with well-anchored evidence
Steps 1. Set up. Unlike other routines, ‘WMYST?’ doesn't
need to be set up, as much as placed at the appropriate time. It naturally
finds a place in response to students' explanatory or interpretive comments. Look
for moments when students make assertions, give explanations, provide
interpretations, or offer opinions.
2. Push for elaboration with evidence. As students share
their ideas and explanations, it is important to follow up by asking the key
question of this routine: “What makes you say that?” The goal here is to both
elicit and support students' attempts at justification; therefore, it may be
necessary to ask, “So what do you see that makes you say that?” or “So what do
you know that makes you say that?”
3. Share the thinking. WMYST? exists mainly in the
interchanges that teachers have with their students, so while documentation of
students' thinking is an option, simply creating an opportunity for more
learners to share what their thinking is when prompted by ‘WMYST?’ is often
enough to enrich a conversation.
Tips:
The language of this
routine's key question, “What makes you say that?” is intentional. When this
question is asked with a genuine tone of respect, it has the potential to
convey our interest in the other. The question shouldn't sound like a challenge
or a test but convey a curiosity regarding how the learner is constructing
understanding of a complex idea or perplexing phenomenon. If a teacher is not
genuinely interested in how students are making sense of ideas, students will
soon realize this and the responses offered will be reduced to short answer
responses without elaboration. Therefore, it is important that this question,
“What makes you say that?” gets asked in authentic contexts whereby student
responses help drive the class's ongoing learning.
As you read, view, or listen to the material before you,
consider the following questions: What are the red lights here? That is, what
things stop you in your tracks as a reader/listener/observer because you doubt
their truth or accuracy? What are the yellow lights here? That is, what things
slow you down a bit, give you pause, and make you wonder if they are true and
accurate or not?
Spotting these occasions would cause students to be more
active listeners and readers, to have their skepticism antennae up if you will.
Using the metaphor of a traffic light, students are encouraged to think in
terms of green lights giving them the freedom to continue, yellow lights as
slowing them down, and red lights as stopping them.
Purpose:
Red Light, Yellow Light is about becoming more aware of
specific moments that hold signs of possible puzzles of truth. If students are
to develop deep understanding of a topic, they have to learn to see the
potential falsehoods and to handle them in ways that aren't dismissive,
overlooked, or debilitating.
Selecting Appropriate Content:
The most suitable content for Red Light, Yellow Light would be source material that presents particular stances, claims, conclusions, or generalizations. Opinion articles in a magazine, mysteries that have yet to be solved, mathematical proofs that might have some weaknesses present are all possible good fits for students to do some Red Light, Yellow Light thinking.
Step 1.
Set up. Briefly introduce the source material that will be
used. You don't want to say anything that will prejudice the reading. In some
instances you may not want to even disclose the source. Tell students you want
them to dig below the surface of the ideas, issues, or findings that may be
present in the material.
2. Look for red lights and yellow lights. Ask students
working individually, in pairs, or even in small groups to search the source
for specific moments and signs of possible puzzles of truth. Using the
stoplight metaphor, red lights could be framed as glaring, halting places.
Yellow lights are places to proceed with a little care and caution. Everything
else is an implicit green light. You might even want to give students red and
yellow markers for this purpose.
3. Collect students' observations and reasons. Make a list
of specific points marked R for red or Y for yellow as students offer them to
the group. Also note specific “zones” that students identify as mostly red or
yellow. Ask students to provide their reasons as to why they've categorized a
particular point or zone as red or yellow. Document these reasons as well.
4. Share the thinking. Once a collected list of red lights
and yellow lights has been created, have the class stand back and look at the
documentation. Ask, “What have we learned about particular signs that indicate
there could be a problem or puzzle of truth? What have we learned about zones
to watch out for?” Allow students to share their thoughts and reasons.
Uses and Variations
When teachers share their classroom efforts, student work,
or reflections around professional readings, Mark uses Red Light, Yellow Light
to move their conversation beyond merely agreeing or disagreeing with one
another's ideas. “By creating an actual space for people to voice what possible
red lights come up for them and what yellow lights seem to emerge, I notice
that teachers listen more closely to each other and build on each others'
thinking.
Another professional use of RLYL can occur around the
discussion of action plans. School principals and department heads have made
use of Red Light, Yellow Light when bringing forth proposals or plans of action
to larger groups of stakeholders.
Tony Cavell, a sixth grade teacher at Bialik, found the metaphor
of red lights and yellow lights could be useful to students in monitoring their
reading comprehension. When students read independently, he asked them to
identify any passages in the text that slowed them down slightly as readers and
those passages that seemed to stop them completely, for whatever reason. In
discussing the text the next day, students would then share their red and
yellow light passages and discuss what it was that caused them to slow down or
stop. As a class, they were then able to talk about how readers deal with such
red lights and yellow lights.
Assessment
What are you noticing about how readily students are
identifying places of potential puzzles in what they read, hear, watch, or
experience? As students identify various red lights or yellow lights, what are
you noticing about their reasons for making such choices? It is important for a
teacher to develop a sense for how his or her students are developing as
critical consumers of information. Also, taking note of the quality of assertions
students themselves may offer in classroom discussions is important. Do you see
them scrutinizing their own arguments, ideas, theories, and generalizations
with red lights and yellow lights to catch their own over-generalizations or
weak arguments?
Tips
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