Please click the links for detailed information on HOW teachers applied thinking routines in their respective classrooms.
Circle of Viewpoints (Bridget Brown, 7th Grade, ELA)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? This routine helps students see and explore multiple perspectives. It helps them understand that different people can have different kinds of connections to the same thing, and that these different connections influence what people see and think.
Application: When and where can it be used? The routine works well with topics and artworks that deal with complex issues. It also works well when students are having a hard time seeing other perspectives or when things seem like there are only two sides to an issue. The routine can be used to open discussions about dilemmas and other controversial issues.
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? Teachers can provide and assign perspectives OR students can help identify perspectives involved-it all depends on the needs of the class or the purpose of the discussion. It was helpful for the students to prepare answers to questions in advance, then discuss and share. I also liked giving them an "on-the-spot" question to answer when their circle met, while staying in their assigned viewpoint. It helped them actually APPLY their thinking.
See-Think-Me-We (Bridget Brown, 7th Grade, ELA)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? The SEE step encourages close looking. Ask learners to fully describe what they see, and to hold off making interpretations or giving opinions until the THINK step. If you like, deepen the SEE step by using a strategy or two from the Viewing Moves. The THINK step encourages learners to share thoughts about the work. All thoughts are welcome, but you can give some direction to the step by asking questions such as: What’s going on in the work? What might it mean? What makes you say that? The ME step asks learners to make personal connections, so it’s a moment when a safe and trusting atmosphere is especially important.
Application: When and where can I use it? Choose an artwork or image. This routine works well with a wide variety of works, so feel free to be experimental or adventurous in your choice. If you typically use classrooms norms for respectful discussion, you may want to refer to them before you begin: The routine invites learners to make personal connections, so it’s especially important to establish an atmosphere of trust and care.
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? You may want to model this by sharing your own personal response first. If you’re working with a large group, it can be helpful to do this step in pairs or trios. You can also add support to the discussion by using strategies from the Dialogue Moves, such as NAME or STORYTELLING. By asking for ‘bigger stories,’ the WE step invites learners to reach for connections beyond themselves. One way to help them do this is to ask them to consider how the personal connections they identified in the ME step might connect to larger themes of human experience. This step can be challenging for students. As with the ME step, it can be helpful for you, the facilitator, to model a response by sharing your own reflections.
Feelings and Options (Mollie Bousu, 7th Grade, U.S. Studies)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? Feelings and Options scaffolds perspective taking, empathic problem-solving, ethics spotting, and communication skills for social dilemmas of digital life.
Application: When and where can I use it? Feelings and Options is a thinking routine for engaging with social and emotional dilemmas. It’s designed to support students to explore different perspectives and practice language for constructive and kind communication. By using this routine repeatedly, students can develop the sensitivity to recognize dilemmas and the dispositions to 1) explore and care about others’ perspectives, and 2) envision options and possible impacts before acting.
This activity can be used anywhere educators see a connection to their learning goals. For example:
• advisory period, where students are learning SEL or character education skills
• library or media class, where students are learning about digital citizenship and technology
• health or wellness class, where students are learning about healthy relationships
• English language arts (ELA), connected to any reading that includes relational dilemmas or social-emotional conflict
• special topics classes, like religion, leadership, or student council
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? This protocol can be implemented in a variety of scenarios, from historical events to fictional dilemas in novels/stories to current events. Teachers should be thoughtful in deciding when to do this activity and how to frame the discussion questions or perspectives; it works best when there isn't one, clear "right" option or when the best options might vary by perspective.
Projecting Across Distance (Mollie Bousu, 9-12 Grades, Social Studies)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage?
This routine encourages learners to take a broader, multi-perspectival view of a topic, event, or issue. While there are other thinking routines that also encourage learners to take diverse perspectives, this routine differentiates itself by inviting learners to specifically compare and contrast perspectives with firstly another community in their country, followed by countries that are geographically different from their own country. In doing so, learners come to understand that:
• Not everyone in the same country or even in the same city, holds the same views, and even if they hold broadly similar views, it’s the shades of differences that may be of greatest interest.
• People in countries that seem to be like theirs may not always think the same way, and that in fact it could be the case that people who are most geographically distant that may share similar views as them.
• It is important to gather a diversity of perspectives on a topic, event, or issue if one is to try to understand it as fully as possible, or to try to walk in someone else’s shoes for a day.
Application: When and where can I use it? An important thing to keep in mind is that learners may not be able to immediately identify communities and countries where the selected topic, event, or issue is approached differently. In that case, you may want to do any of the following:
• Have ready a set of communities and countries that you put forward for learners to explore.
• Invite students to pool what they already happen to know, taking advantage of the diversity among them. Then, assign them to research (e.g. conduct Internet searches; interview adults like parents) some points from the pool of knowledge and bring back their findings.
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? As this routine involves discussing different communities and countries, it will be important to keep a lookout for learners who make sweeping assumptions or broad generalizations about other cultures, peoples, and places. This could lead to misunderstandings and stereotyping of other cultures, peoples, and places, which need to be addressed quickly. Some ways to do so are to follow up with “What makes you say that,” introduce a counter example to highlight the discrepancy in their thinking, etc., or ask the question: do you think everyone in that country/community is likely to think the same way? At all times, it’s crucial not to let the misunderstanding or stereotype take root.
Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate (Kiran Masud, Fifth Grade, ELA)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? This routine activates prior knowledge and helps to generate ideas about a topic. It also facilitates making connections among ideas. Concept maps help to uncover students’ mental models of a topic in a non-linear way.
Application: When and where can I use it? This routine can be useful as a pre-assessment before the beginning of a unit of study if students already have a lot of background information about the topic. Conversely, it can also be useful as a post or ongoing assessment to see whatstudents are remembering and how they are connecting ideas. Individual maps can be used as the basis for construction of a whole classroom map. Maps can also be done progressively, with students adding to their maps each week of the unit.
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? Depending on how much familiarity students have with concept maps, you may need to demonstrate making a concept map using this routine with the whole class. However, if students are relatively familiar with the idea of concept maps, you can launch right into the routine explaining that students will be making concept maps but in a structured way. Give time for students to complete each step of the routine before moving on to the next step. It isn’t necessary that students generate an exhaustive list of all their ideas initially, but make sure they have time to generate a rich and varied list before moving on. Tell students that at any point they can add new ideas to their list and incorporate them into their map. If you are adding to a map over time, you might want to have students use a different color pencil each time they make additions. Explaining and discussing maps with partners helps students to consolidate their thinking and gain other perspectives.
Who Am I? (Kiran Masud, Fifth Grade, ELA)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? It is not unusual for people, systems, objects or ideas to be judged or given labels without others really knowing much about them. This routine encourages students to reserve judgment, take time to find out more about what they see and/or hear, and explore more deeply and broadly other people, and develop greater understanding of similarities and differences.
Application: When and where can I use it? Identity can be a sensitive matter in some contexts. As a teacher, you make decisions all the time about what will serve your students and your context well. If in your judgment, this routine will not serve your context well, don’t use it! Or maybe parts of it would serve well, or some adaptation. This does not mean we should never take up sensitive matters in our classes; arguably we should from time to time. But it’s always a judgment call. Other questions that can foster further understanding of the ways an individual’s identity is developed include: Does where you, or where your parents were born influence your identity? Does the place you live, your school, your friends shape your identity in certain ways? What about your religion and/or skin color? What do you think has shaped your identity?
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? The routine can be introduced and incorporated in one lesson, or in one or more steps over time. The process can be planned or shaped in response to discussions it elicits, and depending on the purpose and context in which it is being utilized. It can be broken into steps in whichever order is most relevant and time frame that is effective, sometimes involving revisiting steps over time.
• How can similarities, not only differences, be brought into discussions about identity? Students in the same school can wear different clothes, eat different foods and celebrate different festivals. Often their identities are shaped by their differences, and generalizations are often made that group them with others sharing those attributes. Invite students to find similarities they share. Invite them to look for similarities among students who learn differently to others, among those who come from different family structures, or those who make very different choices in how they spend time away from school, e.g. playing sport, going shopping, playing the saxophone, studying, meeting friends, painting, making things, spending time in hospital, staying alone or with family. Often the many similarities they discover they share are unexpected.
• What are some tips for the ‘identify’ step? You could invite students to role play, introducing themselves to each other as if meeting for the first time, and ask each other questions that would help them get to know each other better. Discuss the multiplicity of identity. Who do people think you are? Can the same person be a sister, a daughter, a student, a swimmer, a friend? Where do you think you belong? Is a sense of belonging important?
The 3 Whys (Jackie Moorman, 6th Grade, Social Studies)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? This routine nurtures a disposition to discern the significance of a situation, topic, or issue, keeping in mind global, local, and personal connections.
Application: When and where can I use it? The routine can be applied to a broad range of topics, issues, and activities. You may use a powerful image, text, quote, video, or other materials to ground students’ thinking. You may find this routine useful early in a unit after the initial introduction of a topic, when you want students to consider carefully why it might be worth investigating further. Teachers have also used this routine to expand on a given issue in order to help students become aware of that issue’s far-ranging impact and consequences at the local and global levels. In other cases, the routine is used to create a personal connection to a topic that might initially seem remote.
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? Ensure that the students have clarity about the focal point of the analysis. For example, you might ask your students, “Why might understanding social inequality matter to our community?” as opposed to, “Why might this image matter?” Use the questions in the order proposed or in reverse order, beginning with whichever one you think will be the most accessible entry point. For instance, students might identify and articulate the purpose and significance of a story they are reading by first reflecting about why the story matters to them, and then moving on to the questions about their community and the world. In other cases, a teacher may seek to construct a more personal connection to a distant event, thus beginning with the world, then working inward. Invite students to work on one step at a time. If they try to work on all three questions at once, nuances and distinctions between the personal, local, and global may be lost. If time allows, compare and group students’ thoughts to find shared motivations and rationales for learning the topic under study.
Color-Symbol-Image (Jackie Moorman, 7th Grade, Global Studies)
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? This routine asks students to identify and distill the essence of ideas from reading, watching, or listening in non-verbal ways by using a color, symbol, or image to represent the ideas.
Application: When and where can I use it? This routine can be used to enhance comprehension of reading, watching, or listening. It can also be used as a reflection on previous events or learnings. It is helpful if students have had some previous experience with highlighting texts for important ideas, connections, or events. The synthesis happens as students select a color, symbol, and image to represent three important ideas. This routine also facilitates the discussion of a text or event as students share their colors, symbols, and images.
Launch: What are some tips for starting and using this routine? After the class has read a text, you might ask the class to identify some of the interesting, important, or insightful ideas from the text and list these on the board. Write CSI: Color, Symbol, Image on the board. Select one of the ideas the class has identified. Ask students, what color might they use to represent the essence of that idea. What color captures something about that idea, maybe it is the mood or tone. Select another idea and ask the class what symbol they could use to represent that idea. You might define a symbol as a simple line representation or uncomplicated drawing, such as two crossed lines to denote an intersection of ideas, or a circle to represent wholeness or completeness. Then pick another idea from the list and ask students what image they might use to represent that idea. You might define an image as a visual image or metaphor that is more complex and fully developed than just a symbol.