Teaching is tough. Teaching without feedback from students is even more difficult. One way to help students share what’s in their minds is by making their thinking visible. There are tons of strategies to make thinking visible, here I’ll be talking about three.
Chalk Talk
The main premise of a chalk talk is students are able to participate by physically writing their thoughts (ideas or questions) and drawing connections to what others wrote. You start off with some prompts which can be a phrase related to the topic, but questions tend to work best, and either individually or in small groups, students can go around writing their ideas on the poster that the prompts are on. Facilitation by the teacher can really help here by giving examples of how they can respond (by connecting ideas, elaborating on others’, asking questions…). Then, each group/person goes back to where they started and they read out loud what’s written and try to notice any connections emerging.
Chalk talks are great for uncovering any prior knowledge students may have about a topic that you’re introducing and give you an idea of what they’re wondering about. I think this would be fantastic for talking about ideas that the students may be somewhat familiar with but maybe not in the sense talked about in class, for example, “what are your thoughts on having multiple temperature scales (Fahrenheit, Celcius, Kelvin…)”
Connect – Extend – Challenge
Especially in science, so much knowledge is built from previous learning. Even though we, as teachers, know this, many students still understand ideas bit-by-bit because of how they were taught. Connect-extend-challenge helps students not only draw connections between ideas and topics but also how this new information challenges what they already know. You want to be sure to preface this by inviting students to be mindful of how what they’re about to learn may connect with what they already know. After a lesson/video/exhibit/any information-rich activity, allow students to write any connections individually before group discussion. From there, prompt students to probe deeper and identify how their ideas have broadened and extended. Any challenges that came to their heads while drawing these connections should be written down as well. Once all this is down, students can share with partners or small groups, being sure to give reasons behind what they wrote down. Students or the teacher can collect these connections, extensions, and challenges and display them to make the whole class’s thinking visible.
I think this is great later in the year when students are more familiar and comfortable with the language of the topic. I think the challenges brought up could make for good inquiry investigations so the students can take control of their learning and find the answer themselves rather than just being fed the answer by the teacher all the time (if there is one).
Micro Lab Protocol
Communication is essential for people no matter their profession, and being able to productively listen and share ideas is necessary. The micro lab protocol allows for students to share their ideas and listen to others. As seen in the video below, in groups of 3, students take turns sharing their ideas about a topic while the other group members just listen. Once everyone has gone, students can then talk together and ask for clarification, questions, and especially make connections to what others said. As a class, students can then share what they found.
I think this is especially useful for a class that tends to go off-topic because each student only gets a certain amount of time when they’re talking and no one else should be in their group. It’s also important to build up to this by starting with a shorter time for each student, but as they get comfortable talking in groups and articulating their thoughts, the time can be extended. Giving students practice on how to present their own ideas and connect to others is very helpful for when they go into the workforce. In the video above, the teacher used this strategy to prepare for a test, but I think I would use it to give students the opportunity to discuss productively for a solution, for example, how to best design a lab procedure to answer a question like “why does it take longer for saltwater to boil compared to pure water?”
Hi Evan,
Great post! I think the MTV strategy that I like the most out of the three listed is “connect-extend-challenge”. As a future chemistry teacher, do you have any suggestions on how you would incorporate this strategy in your future classroom? Is there a particular topic in chemistry that you think would be best for this strategy?
Jay,
Thank you! One topic that I think would work well with connect-extend-challenge is the idea of atomic models, where once they understand the plum pudding model, for example, I can introduce the Bohr model and see how they’re connected and what’s different about each.
Hi Evan,
It was great to see your perspectives about making thinking visible in this post. The three routines discussed in post will be useful for helping students explore, synthesize, and organize their ideas on topics and concepts learned in your future classroom. The video demonstrating on how to conduct the micro-lab routine was helping in understanding how this strategy looks like in a classroom setting. In your future classroom, what types of topics and/or concepts (aside from the one mentioned) do you think will be better understood by students through the micro-lab routine?
Lauren,
Thank you! I think the micro-lab routine could be useful wherever students are meant to form an opinion about something, like how to best do a lab or even a debate between synthetic vs natural fertilizers maybe. I think it can be applied in many areas.