Thinking Is Seeing

Kids are always thinking.  Ideally, they’d be thinking about the lesson, but the mind often wanders to all areas of life.  As a teacher, it’s hard to tell when your kids are really thinking about the lesson, or if they’re mindlessly filling in blanks while daydreaming about something in their personal life.

That’s why there are thinking strategies to make thinking more concrete and clear.  The book Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison provides a list of strategies and activities for students to show their thinking and to keep the class engaged in new ways.  Below are three examples and how they can be used in the classroom.

3-2-1 Bridge

The goal of 3-2-1 Bridge is to activate a student’s prior knowledge, introduce new or more specific information, and allow the student to compare the new information to their original conceptions.

It starts with asking the student to form 3 Ideas, 2 Questions, and 1 Analogy for a topic.  These prompt the student to think about their topic and to describe what they know in different ways.

After the chart is filled in, the new information is introduced. Students can read, take notes on a lecture, watch a video, conduct an experiment, or perform another activity that conveys new information.

When students are more familiar with the material, they can then go back and make a new 3-2-1 chart using what they learned.

The “bridge” is formed when the two charts are compared.  Students can discuss in groups, or a classroom discussion can allow students to share what they learned.  They may choose to share misconceptions that they have fixed, creative analogies, or new questions they have formed.  A larger discussion may lead to students answering each other’s questions.

In the area of biology, any topic that students have heard of before could be used here.  Words like “water,” “air,” and “element” may be familiar to students, yet they may not understand them from a scientific perspective.  After learning water’s unique properties or air’s composition, however, the students would have a different list of things to say about the topic.

Compass Points

Compass Points helps a student or class gather ideas on a new proposition.  This sort of thinking is not necessary with every topic, but it can help students form arguments and considerations for controversial or ethical situations.

The normal cardinal directions are replaced with:

E: Excitements. What excites you about the proposition?

W: Worries. What do you find worrisome about the proposition?

N: Needs. What else do you need to know or learn about the proposition?

S: Stance, Steps, or Suggestions. What is your stance? What next step can you take for evaluation? What further suggestions do you have?

If the proposition is a foreign concept to students, a space for questions and clarification should be allowed in the beginning.  Once they understand the proposal, students can add their thoughts on post-it notes on one of four large sheets of paper.

Once the students have progressed through the compass, open up a discussion to share the different perspectives.  Students can help support each other by expanding on their arguments and learning to form rebuttals against the opposing viewpoint. The assignment also creates an environment where students can see both perspectives instead of jumping straight to one decision.

This strategy is best for controversial or ethical situations.  Students need to have a basis for either decision, so introducing topics that are less questionable will not be very effective.  Any information that is typically presented as “fact” would not serve much purpose with Compass Points, but more controversial topics like ethics in animal testing, GMOs, and how far “too far” is in science can work well.

Zoom In

Zoom In involves showing students a portion of an image and slowly revealing more and more of the image.  The process allows students to guess and modify their assumptions with new observations.

The activity starts by showing students a section of an image and allowing them to form hypotheses and discuss observations.  They can discuss what they see in groups and make predictions based off of what they can see.

After the first hypotheses are made, reveal more of the image.  The new segment should include more observable characteristics so that students may modify their original inferences.

Let students speak about how their perceptions changed with new information, and ask them about relationships between different parts of the image.

Continue the process of revealing and hypothesizing until the full image is revealed. Finish with a discussion.

Thought-provoking questions for the class include:

• How did seeing more of the image influence their thinking?
• Which parts were particularly influential or dramatic?
• Which parts left it more open ended?
• How would a different order of revealing have influenced their thinking?

This type of activity sparks a student’s curiosity and promotes questions.  Students learn to adapt their schema with new observations and use the input of others to consider options.  Because students have to guess with limited information, they pick up on details that normally may be overlooked with the full image.

In ecology, the activity could be used to describe the difference between an organism, species, community, and so on.  Starting with a single organism may lead to several guesses, but students will not initially be thinking about how the organism interacts with others.

Thinking strategies like these show progress.  They enhance a student’s ability to think of science in a new way and to pose their own questions, but they also allow teachers to gauge where students stand on the introduction of a topic and where the students have grown to after the topic has been taught.