Making Thinking Visible Through Strategies and Techniques
Christina Patella
Dr. Pamela Vaughn
Pathways to Learning
1 December 2014
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Making Thinking Visible
Making Thinking Visible is a new way of learning geared toward the learner and their learning style. In the day and age of technology and answers at the tip of our fingers, it is really important in the education world for the teachers to ensure learning and thinking is still occurring. It is very easy thing to ask a student to look up an answer, but it is another thing to ask them to explain the process and show how they got that answer. “When we talk about making thinking visible, we are generally referring to those specific thinking …show more content…
Teachers across the nation use different strategies to incorporate into their work that will help students gain deeper knowledge into their thoughts. Many teachers always teach to the book, but now there needs to be routines that encourage deeper thinking. Throughout chapter four, there are many routines given as a guide for teachers to use in their classroom. One of the routines that can be used to encourage deeper thought would be “Chalk Talk”. This is one of the most basic routines for participation and helping students understand their own learning and ideas that can be used for almost any subject and time. The major idea of “Chalk Talk” is to create a conversation silently and on paper in the mind of a student. “The Chalk Talk process itself highlights the notion of building understanding in a collaborative way through putting forward ideas, questioning one another, and developing the ideas further”(Ritchhart, 2011). A topic that can be used for “Chalk Talk” for a student going to high school could be thoughts, ideas wonders and questions about high school as a whole. Students can then make a web, or a chart of ideas for each topic and they can process their own thoughts and start to gain better intellect for what they are thinking about. Research has shown that “When children are aware of their thinking processes, they develop dispositions of good thinking and become more critical and able to expand their expressive repertoire (writing, drawing, dancing, and singing)” (Salmon, 2008). Through the “Chalk Talk” process, students not only gain their own insight, but teachers better understand what their students think, and assess the class to see where they stand. There are many other routines in this chapter such as “Zoom-In”, “See-Think-Wonder”, “Compass Points” and the “Explanation
Christina Patella
Dr. Pamela Vaughn
Pathways to Learning
1 December 2014
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Making Thinking Visible
Making Thinking Visible is a new way of learning geared toward the learner and their learning style. In the day and age of technology and answers at the tip of our fingers, it is really important in the education world for the teachers to ensure learning and thinking is still occurring. It is very easy thing to ask a student to look up an answer, but it is another thing to ask them to explain the process and show how they got that answer. “When we talk about making thinking visible, we are generally referring to those specific thinking …show more content…
Teachers across the nation use different strategies to incorporate into their work that will help students gain deeper knowledge into their thoughts. Many teachers always teach to the book, but now there needs to be routines that encourage deeper thinking. Throughout chapter four, there are many routines given as a guide for teachers to use in their classroom. One of the routines that can be used to encourage deeper thought would be “Chalk Talk”. This is one of the most basic routines for participation and helping students understand their own learning and ideas that can be used for almost any subject and time. The major idea of “Chalk Talk” is to create a conversation silently and on paper in the mind of a student. “The Chalk Talk process itself highlights the notion of building understanding in a collaborative way through putting forward ideas, questioning one another, and developing the ideas further”(Ritchhart, 2011). A topic that can be used for “Chalk Talk” for a student going to high school could be thoughts, ideas wonders and questions about high school as a whole. Students can then make a web, or a chart of ideas for each topic and they can process their own thoughts and start to gain better intellect for what they are thinking about. Research has shown that “When children are aware of their thinking processes, they develop dispositions of good thinking and become more critical and able to expand their expressive repertoire (writing, drawing, dancing, and singing)” (Salmon, 2008). Through the “Chalk Talk” process, students not only gain their own insight, but teachers better understand what their students think, and assess the class to see where they stand. There are many other routines in this chapter such as “Zoom-In”, “See-Think-Wonder”, “Compass Points” and the “Explanation