Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners (Jossey-Bass Teacher)

Product Information

Art teachers could have a pivotal role in demystifying math: showing how it is integral to creating art and not something only used in math class. There’s a variety of ways teachers could make connections to the CCMP: Students who read, re-read, repeat, and rehearse a CBRT script in preparation for performance tend to remember the information in the text. Dr. Flynn says: reading and rehearsing scripts based on curriculum content increases the likelihood that students will perform better on assessments.

As students begin to make sense out of their learning, they can process these ideas by using sketch-noting. Sketch-notes (also called visual note-taking) consist of a blend of words, pictures, icons, and organizational cues (arrows, circles, dotted lines) used to make sense out of ideas. Students might sketch-note on a tablet or digital notebook (such as a Remarkable 2) or on a sheet of paper. They might do this during the direct instruction portion of a virtual meeting or while they watch a video, listen to a podcast, or read an article. The goal is that they are using their own sketches to wrestle with ideas and make learning visible. Note that it doesn’t have to look nice. As the teacher, you’ll likely need to stress to students that you are not assessing the artistry of their sketchnotes. Ask students to imagine that he/she is a cook getting ready to prepare a favorite dish (such as popcorn, a sandwich, pizza) and think about: What ingredients would you need? How would you make it? What would you do first, next?Includes questions, exercises, and discussion prompts to inspire reflection by individuals and teams Routines that help students find coherence, draw conclusions, and distill the essence of topics or experiences. These questions are examples of two Artful Thinking routines called “What Makes You Say That?” (a routine that asks students to interpret and justify answers). And, “Beginning, Middle, End” (a routine asking students to imagine and to sequence). Not all math concepts are readily (or literally) visible in fine art examples. However, the Common Core Math Practices (CCMP) certainly can be! Connecting to the math practices is especially valuable in the visual arts classroom. It turns out that the math practices correlate beautifully with the Artists Habit of Mind! The processes and skills that we want students to use with ease in math (make sense of the problem and persevere in solving it, use appropriate tools, look for patterns and structures, etc.) are all attributes of the artistic creative process and what artists do!

Since then I’ve developed my own approach to using Visible Thinking with art and museum objects. You can find out more about Visible Thinking in the Museum (VTM for short) here. Who is VTM for? As a former middle school ELL teacher, I used to use these structures as a way to introduce new ideas. Then I would reinforce them by using the visual and doing a Total Physical Response (TPR) for vocabulary. Students would fill out the information in a graphic organizer and practice the hand / body movements as a whole group. In a virtual environment, you can create videos (or have students create videos) of their TPRs and then practice the movement, visual, and definition during synchronous virtual meetings. This is more challenging for older students, where a TPR can feel childish, so it might work best to have students submit their own TPR routines in a video format that they share one-on-one with the teacher. We started coaching students to understand, "Writing happens in two phases, first you must determine WHAT you want to say, then you must determine HOW you want to say it." We’ll call them Vanna White of the group :). Then, have one person read the poem dramatically to the rest of the class. Considerations :Since there is no right or wrong answer in art, even the most reluctant or hesitant student is willing to write one line of poetry. It never fails that the poems are wonderful and the students are very proud of their poetry. Implementing Cooperative Poetry with Other Content Areas

Cultures of Thinking in Action, takes the next step in helping readers not only understand how a culture of thinking looks and feels, but also how to create it for themselves and their learners. Arguing that no set of practices or techniques alone is sufficient to create a culture of thinking in and of itself, Ritchhart explores the underlying beliefs that motivate the creation of cultures of thinking, presenting key mindsets every educator and leader needs to embrace if they are serious about creating powerful thinkers and learners. Thinking routines are intended for repeated use, which enables participants to remember them and use them independently in no time at all After imagining that they have walked into the setting, they record what they might smell, hear, taste, touch, feel against their skin, and feel inside and record descriptive words, phrases, or sentences for each on an organizer. Sketch to Write is perhaps the most literal strategy for making thinking visible. In this activity, we’re not focused on the quality of the sketch itself. It’s more about showing what students are thinking or learning.

Listen to the Podcast

A selection of different thinking routines can be used throughout a programme to target different areas of thinking and keep the programme lively. As an example, look at artwork by Ed Ruscha. This is an artist who experimented with words as part of the art form. Many of Ruscha’s pieces depict single words as the center or the focal point of the work.