USE THINKING ROUTINES!
A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. Researchers from Harvard's Project Zero designed thinking routines to deepen students’ thinking and to help make that thinking “visible.”
Thinking routines help to reveal students’ thinking to the teacher and also help students themselves to notice and name particular “thinking moves,” making those moves more available and useful to them in other contexts.
Tips for Using Thinking Routines with your Students
Thinking routines are designed to support particular kinds of thinking, so it’s important to choose the right tool for the specific type of thinking skill to be developed or nurtured.
Thinking routines are also designed to be used routinely. In the same way that physical exercises need to be repeated in order to develop certain muscles, thinking routines, used repeatedly, help students to develop certain kinds of thinking. Rather than using a different thinking routine with every artifact, consider using the same thinking routine (such as See, Think, Wonder) with multiple artifacts.
As you use the thinking routines, consider how you (or the students) will document students’ ideas and questions. Try to return to these ideas and questions at the end of the learning experience and in subsequent class sessions, so that you and the students can see how their thinking and understanding are developing.
Learn More about Thinking Routines
Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based conceptual framework, which aims to integrate the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. Explore these resources to learn more!
VIDEO
ARTICLE
BOOK
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
ARTICLE
BOOK
"Ready to Use" Thinking Routine Activities
The collection below contains over 40 "Ready to Use" Thinking Routines. They have been made in Google Slides, Sheets, and Docs for your convenience. Each routine is set to "View Only." We invite you to "Make a Copy" of it and use/edit them as you see fit in your class.
