The book Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison is FANTASTIC! The book has routines, designed by researchers at Project Zero at Harvard, that scaffold and support thinking. These routines allow thinking to become visible through questioning, listening, documenting, expressing and reflecting. Give one of the routines a try on the first day of school. The following link will take you to an explanation of Compass Points. Please post a comment if you give it a try:-)
Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Ron Ritchhart et al. Link: http://amzn.com/047091551X
Intentional planning and explicit teaching are the keys to
our students’ success.Knowing the
purpose of why we might use a tool such as Quick Writes is essential.
Quick Writes are timed, focused writing experiences that can
be used for a wide variety of purposes.They can provide a means to build writing stamina and fluency over
time.Quick Writes can be used as a way
to activate prior knowledge or back ground knowledge on a new topic or synthesize
current understandings in order to go deeper. They can be used to try new
strategies in the writing process without getting bogged down in longer pieces.These short bursts of focused writing
encourage critical thinking and allow students to demonstrate deeper
understanding or application. Quick
writes can also promote reflection of learning and provided a way to informally
assess student thinking. This information can then be used as evidence toward
meeting the lesson target and standard.
View the video clip and think of an experience or
adventure you’ve had that has taken your breath away. Provide evidence and then
conclude with a statement that explains your personal take away from the experience or adventure.
