Making Thinking Visible

Source

This info graphic came across my feed this morning and it was too good not to pass on.  While my school is an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme school, Visible Thinking Routines are a part of our every day teaching.

I love the simplicity of the routines, most of which require little set up (which is always nice!)  Though they may be simple, these routines are quite powerful in helping reveal to students what they're really, truly thinking, and helps them deepen their understandings in general.

We tend to use "What Makes You Say That" a lot.  It's a fun routine to combine with our Twitter board, as students have to  justify their response.  Another one I love is "See, Think, Wonder" because that routine can be applied on the fly, for anything.

This info graphic doesn't cover all the routines, but it does give a wonderful overview in a fairly friendly format.  The source of the graphic is listed below, and takes you to the Langwitches blog, where you may get lost for a while.  Well…… at least I got lost for a while!

See. Think. Wonder.

This is another fantastic Thinking Routine.  In lower grades, they call it see-think-wonder.  In upper grades, we often call it observe-think-question.

What do you see?

And that's exactly what we did.

As we were readying to do some close reading, I remembered an old game we used to play at camp.  You know the one I'm talking about?  The one where one person stands in front of the group for a minute, and the group has to "memorize" that person.  Then, the person steps out of site of the group and changes ONE thing.  Just one.  They return to the group, and it's the groups job to try and notice (see/observe) the difference.

Well, it did wonders for helping the kids start to NOTICE details in their reading.

It was a short, but extremely engaging way to kick off a new reading unit!

Read. Aloud. A lot!

Like many elementary teachers, I read aloud to my class on a daily basis.  Sometimes, if they're persistent enough, and I'm feeling giving, I'll even read a little extra.  This request usually happens when I end the day's chapters on a cliff hanger.

Which I do.  A lot.  Hey, it's fun!

Anyway, one of the things that was a tug-of-war decision for me was using our read aloud as instructional, or using it for pure enjoyment.  I know that there are schools of thought that argue for each side, and both are very valid.  I've found that we do snack time during read aloud, giving the kids a few minutes to chat at the beginning before I start reading.

Once I start reading?  They're usually hooked. X Our Daily 5 CAFE board is right by my read aloud chair, which makes a great place for modeling some of the strategies that are on the board.  This helps with instruction in a very organic, natural way.  Most, if not all of our read alouds happen this way - me reading, using the ever-growing board of strategies, and the kids munching away until a cliff hanger leaves them slack jawed.

Something I started this year, though, is a project or activity AFTER read aloud.  This is a great place to bring in some of the Thinking Routines that we use in the district- my favorite for read aloud being chalk talk.

In this case, prior to our reading unit on character study, we did a mini character study using our read aloud and a chalk talk.  The kids went from poster to poster "talking" with their "chalk."  We did this a few times with the main characters in the story.  Then each group was given a poster to analyze, and they had to create a character sketch of just that character. I think it was kind of fun, and so did the kids!