Source: https://smartprimaryed.com/2016/04/16/ideas-visible-thinking-thinking-routines-part-3/
Thinking Routines are tools designed to help students externalize their thinking processes, making their ideas, reasoning and creative thought more explicit and visible in the classroom. These routines are particularly useful in the music classroom to foster deeper understanding, reflection, and inquiry as students engage with music through listening, performing and creating. Thinking Routines promote metacognition and support students in organizing their thoughts, making connections, and exploring ideas more systematically.
CAIT 5 (Explores possibilities and generates novel and useful ideas) and CAIT 6 (Evaluates and refines ideas to formulate novel and useful solutions)
Providing structured prompts that guide students through a process of idea generation, evaluation, and refinement. These routines encourage students to reflect on their thinking and articulate their creative processes more clearly.
See/Hear - Think - Wonder: This strategy encourages students to observe the details of what musicians do, as well as to listen closely to musical elements used in the music. It also encourages them to think deeply about what they are seeing and hearing. This helps students to deepen their understanding of music and musical processes, and encourages them to make use of these learning experiences when creating their own music. This is particularly suited for videos/music with sufficient details to capture the imagination of the the students to provide room for discussions (E.g. Diego Stocco’s ‘Music from a Tree’ Youtube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY-ZoVMwGKM&list=PLSIFRSmCfL3B35ysmQxXULeSPnhFLV4T9&index=2)
Listening: Ten Times Two: After listening to a piece of music for the first time, the teacher can ask the students to list 10 words/phrases that describe what they heard. The music is then played a second time and students are asked to expand their original list by adding 10 more words. This encourages students to extend their initial ideas, listen for more subtle details in the music and think about new ways to describe what they hear. (Lind, 2013)
Creative Questions: After listening to a piece of music, teachers can ask students to brainstorm at least 12 questions about a piece of music, e.g. “Why was it composed?” “What if …” “What is the purpose of …” “What would you change?” This helps to expand and deepen students’ thinking about music and to motivate students to ask questions. It also helps them to focus on using specific music vocabulary as they investigate the music. (Lind, 2013)
Step Inside: Teachers can encourage students to “step inside” a character in the song (if applicable) or a musician involved in the making of the music. Students will need to consider different perspectives to investigate, describe, question and imagine different viewpoints. (Lind, 2013)
Think - Pair - Share: This strategy is useful for ‘create’ whereby students start by thinking of their own ideas individually, then pairing with a classmate to share their ideas. They can give feedback to each other and have the chance to improve their creation before finally sharing them with the rest of the class. This is useful in helping students come up with their own ideas, share their learning, reflect on feedback and build up their confidence prior to performing in front of the class.
Colour, Symbol, Image: Use of graphic notation encourages students to use their creativity to represent abstract musical ideas visually. They can come up with their own novel ways to represent sounds and music by engaging in the age-old question of ‘how do we represent sound on paper’; or they can make use of colours, symbols and images to represent their musical ideas when composing their own music.
Website: Project Zero’s Thinking Routine Toolbox https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines
Article: Into the Deep: Mindful Music Learning http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1048371313496785
References
Lind, V. (2013) Into the Deep: Mindful Music Learning. General Music Today. 27(2): 18 - 21). http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1048371313496785
Williamson, A. (2014) Visible Thinking in the Music Classroom. Andres Williamson’s Blog. http://www.andrewwilliamson.me/2014/04/visible-thinking-in-music-classroom.html