Making Thinking Visible: Contextualize-Connect-Collate

❖ Key Question 1 - What kind of thinking is necessary in this situation? How do I backwards engineer the
scaffolds which will support the thinking that students are noted to require for success in their learning.
❖ Key Question 2 - What are the thinking moves that I want to grow our students into to empower them as
thinkers.

Making thinking Visible requires a decision making process. It is a process that takes us beyond randomly
selecting a thinking routine and hoping it might have the desired impact. It takes us beyond conversations about
what content we are going to teach or what activities our students will do. It brings to our planning process a
deliberate attention to the thinking moves we want to make routine for our students. It looks something like this:

● What thinking do I hope to make routine here?

● Why that thinking in this context?
● How might I support my students to make this thinking move?
● How do I make this thinking move routine?
● How do I empower my students to make this move routinely?

Our students come from diverse cultural backgrounds, as a result they might find engaging with the textbook
reading challenging. The intent behind the thinking routine is to get students to deepen their understanding
rather than focus on ‘skim reading’. Thinking routines are the tools and the structures which make the thinking
we desire possible. Thinking routines make visible and concrete the things that good students are doing
automatically. For example, good readers are already making connections as they read; connections within the
text and connections beyond the text. When we use thinking routines we make the use of such skills explicit, we
are naming and noticing effective practices and encouraging others to do the same. The thinking moves evolved
from a process of noticing and naming the types of thinking that effective learners were already doing. Once we
identify these moves we can consider how we bring these into the realm of our teaching. If I know good readers
make connections, how might I make this thinking move accessible to all my students and how might I refine
and strengthen this move even for those who are already making it.

A Vital Understanding - Thinking routines are not going to elevate the quality of weak or low order content.
Deep thinking requires rich content. Content that requires the learner to grapple with complexity and ambiguity
when married with the right thinking routine takes the learning deeper.
And linked to this - The routine is only as powerful as one’s purpose. If our purpose is to get the routine done
or to do a routine, we lose any power that it might have.

Therefore: Don’t abandon your use of a routine because it didn’t work. Explore why. Was it that you were not
clear on its purpose? Was it paired with content that demanded thinking? Did you give it the time it required?
Did students understand your intent? Might the routine need to be used multiple times so that it becomes
routine?

Routines in practice:

1. Read - Prioritize - Connect

2. I used to think….Now I know!
3. Story-board

4. Predict - Observe - Explain

5. Chunking
6. Sort it