One of the BIG hurdles for teachers wishing to move towards a culture of thinking is the mindset of our students. It is common for students to come to their learning with the belief that school is about memorising information and reciting correct answers. Having to think, reason, make connections and consider different perspectives is for many new and challenging. Some students will want to be told what they need to know. For students who have only experienced a teaching and learning process that emphasises the transfer of knowledge from teacher to learner, being asked to think can feel like being abandoned and left to one’s own resources. They will see it as the role of the teacher to do the thinking, organise the content and explain the connections between ideas. Changing this mindset is the first step.
An excellent place to start is by setting a clear agenda for thinking as an essential part of learning. If the students know that we value thinking, then they are more likely to engage in the process. A core belief linked to this from Project Zero is captured in these words: “All learning is a consequence of thinking.” This involves deliberate attention to the role that the learner’s mind plays in creating schemas which capture and then allow us to utilise learning from the experiences we have. Learning is an active process that requires not only attention in the moment but subsequent cognitive effort as we form, organise and reorganise memories. When we are required to think with and utilise our knowledge in new ways, we make robust memories, and we enhance the interconnectedness of our knowledge base.
Establishing a culture of thinking requires our deliberate attention to the factors which support this combined with awareness of the more subtle messages we send about learning. These subtle messages we send as teachers and schools play a critical role in this process, and our students learn as much from the culture and language of an institution as they do from the deliberate intent of the lessons provided. A school might have a stated belief in the development of long-life skills but then undermine this by placing an emphasis on test results. According to Ritchart, we teach a lot of very fragile knowledge and content that we know will not stick two weeks after the test. Instead of building a culture that equates learning with work and measures success with test scores, he describes a set of cultural forces that influence attitudes and beliefs about our learning potential and our engagement with it.
Getting Started
Start gently with some accessible thinking routines. A colleague who is a geography teacher broke his teaching and his subject down into three essential questions:
What is there?
Why is it there?
Who or what cares?
Other disciplines are likely to have their own set of questions. The key here is to identify the fundamental thinking moves and deep questions that our learners will be engaging with. When we begin by asking what type of thinking will our learners need in this situation, the resulting lessons can be framed by this goal. If for instance, I want my students to reason with evidence, I will then build opportunities which require this, use scaffolds that support this and provide feedback on how they have managed this learning.
In the instance of our geography students, it might be that we want them to make connections with what they know about geographical features while looking closely at an environment they are studying. With this in mind showing students a rich image of an environment and explaining that ‘today we will use a thinking routine to explore this image together’ can be a good start. We might start with “See, Think, Wonder”. The students are invited to look closely at the image and note what is there. As they do so, they share what they think about what they see. In this way, they make connections to prior knowledge. e.g. I see a row of trees and shrubs, I think there must be a watercourse in that area, or maybe this is a planting along a human-made structure like a road. They finish with what questions or wonderings they have and this leads to further exploration. e.g. If there is a watercourse in that part of the image, where does the water go? Who uses it? Why does the land look so dry just a short distance from this line of vegetation?
If the students are reluctant to notice things in the image, we might try a routine like “Looking Ten Times Two”. In this, they look once at the image and notice ten things. The initial list is likely to include large and mostly obvious features. They write these down. We then show the image again, and they notice another ten things. We can repeat as often as needed. Each time they are forced to look more closely and see more detail. You then use this for discussion around the making of connections.
Make it Visible so you can talk about it and shape it.
Our use of thinking routines invites students to move beyond knowing and step towards an understanding. If we believe that all learning is a consequence of thinking, we wish to engage students in thinking that aligns with the intent of the curriculum. When we use thinking routines as a scaffold for thinking, our goal is to make the thinking of our students visible. Without a strategy to make the thinking of our students visible, it remains hidden from view. Without access to an FMRI machine, we are not going to see the inner workings of our minds, but we can utilise strategies that shine a light on the process of thinking. We aim to take a very abstract idea of thinking and turn it into a set of steps that can be discussed, shared and shaped. Once we can perceive the thinking of our students, we can reflect on how we might shape this in ways which move them towards the understandings that matter. Our valuing of thinking and our recognition that thinking is both important and challenging allows us to make teaching moves which bring this thinking into the realm of the teachable.
A powerful question: What Makes You Say That?
“What makes you say that?” is a wonderful question that requires our students to explain the thinking behind their responses. The more often you ask this, the better. And making it a routine part of classroom conversation sends a message that we value thinking more than answers. It forces the students to think about their responses and shows you value thinking more than answers. I used to have just the initials WMYST? on the wall and would point to it whenever students made claims or gave answers with no evidence.
Making thinking routine
One of the very BIG understandings about visible thinking and cultures of thinking is captured by Mark Church “Don’t plan for the thinking routine you are going to use, plan for the thinking you want to make routine”. Our goal is, after all, to make thinking a routine part of our student’s learning rather than to have them do lots of thinking routines. This leads us to wonder about what type of thinking do we want our students to do in this lesson, and what thinking matters most to their learning at this point in time.
The Understanding Map - Identifying the thinking moves we make routinely
The understanding map is one of the most classroom-friendly resources to evolve from the Visible Thinking project at Project Zero. It was developed from observations of classrooms and thinking in the real world and identifies fundamental thinking moves which we all use frequently. As we plan learning, we might consider what thinking move do we want our students to make. The understanding map helps us identify the thinking moves we will focus on, and gives us a common language with which to discuss this with colleagues and students. By using a common language, we enhance the enculturation of these thinking moves. In the end, when we talk to our students about “Making connections” or “Reasoning with evidence” we want them to have an idea of what this means and why this matters.
Resources to get you started
If you are wanting to better understand how you might transform your classroom into a culture of thinking or you are looking to make the thinking’s of your students visible, these books are the perfect place to start:
Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison
Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 forces we must master to truly transform our schools by Ron Ritchhart
And look out for the new Book by Ron Ritchart and Mark Church, “The Power of Making Thinking Visible”.
“We are thrilled to announce the publication of our latest book, The Power of Making Thinking Visible due out in April, 2020. Since Making Thinking Visible was first published in 2011, Mark Church and I have continued to research the use of thinking routines and their impact on learning (we share both qualitative and quantitative data in the new book). At the same time, we have been developing new routines to help structure, facilitate, and enhance learning and thinking. This companion book of new thinking routines draws on the work we have been doing in schools around the world and provides rich examples of the routines in action across multiple grade levels and subject areas. We also articulate exactly why and how the practice of making thinking visible is so powerful for teachers and students.” (Ron Ritchhart)
If your aim is to make thinking routine in your classrooms, you are likely to be seeking the ideal thinking routine to support your students in their thinking. This new site from HGSE Project Zero makes this task easy. In addition to friendly navigation and logical layout, the site includes a number of new routines.
Project Zero’s Thinking Routines Tool
This tool highlights Thinking Routines developed across a number of research projects at PZ. While Project Zero did not originate the idea of a thinking routine, a vast array of its work has explored the development of thinking, the concept of thinking dispositions, and the many ways routines can be used to support student learning and thinking across age groups, disciplines, ideals, competencies, and student populations. In addition to the initial Visible Thinking research initiative, some of the larger PZ research projects focused on enhancing thinking include Artful Thinking, Cultures of Thinking, Agency by Design, and PZ Connect.
By Nigel Coutts