See-Think-Me-We

Planning Considerations:

I chose to use the See-Think-Me-We protocol from Harvard’s Project Zero as a way for students to develop more empathy as they listen to/read the stories of others. I chose to use this protocol when we were in the midst of reading Brown Girl Dreaming, which is a memoir.  I wanted students to personally connect with some of the ideas the author was writing about, specifically, what is something that is important to you and why is it important?

As with all of these perspective-taking protocols, they require students to be respectful and learn about others without judgement.  I would implement this activity a little later in the year when classroom expectations/norms have been established.

We re-read the poem entitled “ribbons” from Brown Girl Dreaming and talked about why these objects were significant to Jacqueline Woodson (the author).  This took about 10 minutes.  Then I modeled how to do the See-Think-Me-We protocol using a story from the Tenement Museum’s online exhibit.  That took another 10 minutes.  Students then had about 20 minutes to explore the museum on their own and complete the See-Think-Me-We protocol as many times as they could, using the slideshow I provided.  Then each student selected their own object and we did a writing activity where they reflected on why it was significant to them.  These were collected into a group slideshow that was printed and displayed in our rec room as an actual museum.  The students then had 10-15 minutes to walk the “museum” of their peers’ objects and do the See-Think-Me-We protocol again!

Suggested Resources/Materials:

See-think-me-we

Slideshow (assigned to students)

Tenement Museum Your Stories

Standards alignment:

Based on Wisconsin State ELA Standards:

W7.1, W7.2, SL7.1, R7.6

Student examples:

Student stories 

*See images below!

Recommendations:

This activity is a great way for students to share about themselves, and learn about their classmates, in a safe way.  Students choose how much to share.  It could be used as a community builder at any point in the year.  It could be a great protocol for analyzing art, primary source documents, current events images, and many other texts. 

Reflection:

This activity wasn’t super academic.  I did score the students’ writing when they described their objects, but the See-Think-Me-We protocol was largely there to guide students in their reflection and discussions.

We had a very informal debrief every time we used the protocol: we shared what objects we saw on the museum and how we connected to them.  We talked about things we learned about our classmates.  It was a great community builder, but also taught important perspective-taking skills. I emphasized that we were not judging what others shared, but looking at it and reflecting, looking for similarities and differences.

Students LOVED the museum of each others’ objects. They were excited to see their friends’ objects, but I challenged them to study the objects of classmates they didn’t know as well, too.

Images from our museum walk through, studying each other's objects/stories: