Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison, Jossey Bass (2011). A link for more information: www.pz.harvard.edu/vt.
Here’s my latest recommendation for Meta Learning. Although the title is about thinking, the “visible” focus makes it an ideal tool for Meta Learning as well as thinking. Here’s why.
1. The format of what the authors call thinking “routines” is a series of steps (usually 4 or 5) that teachers use to engage students in thinking about and talking about their thinking.
2. The careful use of terminology encourages learners to be mindful of what they are calling what they are doing: that is, the kind of thinking. So, the teacher doesn’t just say, “Think about it.” Rather s/he helps students to unpack thinking to distinguish among: thinking as observing, explaining, interpreting, reasoning, connecting, perspective taking, drawing conclusions, wondering, making generalization, generating possibilities, evaluating evidence, identifying claims/assumptions/bias.
3. The 20 routines are meant to be built into everyday classroom conversations, cued by the wording of the routine. Four examples: (1) See-Think-Wonder: What do you see? What do you think is going on? What do you wonder?; (2) Connect-Extend-Challenge; (3) What makes you say that?; (4) I used to think…now I think.
4. There are excellent scenarios of teachers being “meta” teachers carrying on these conversations.
5. Several of the routines specifically ask students to be consciously aware of their role as evaluators of information: for example, Claim-Support-Question.
