The Power of Making Thinking Visible in the Classroom
An Overview of MTV, a reflection on the implementation of an MTV strategy in a secondary social studies classroom, connections between TCE thresholds and MTV strategies, and a collection of supplemental resources to deepen knowledge and increase discussions.
- Making Thinking Visible is a powerful strategy that can benefit the classroom by fostering deep learning, cultivating engaged learners, and changing the role of teacher and students
- MTV offers catered learning, incorporating aspects of their world into lessons to increase engagement
- MTV aims to develop students as thinkers and learners by cultivating their dispositions towards thinking
- MTV builds community by encouraging hands-on learning and relationship building in the classroom. MTV helps students better understand themselves and how they relate to others
- MTV fosters deep learning, helping to create meaningful learning experiences
- MTV requires a mindset shift in educators and learners and is therefore a transformation that learning spaces must make over time
MTV Strategy: Ladder of Feedback
Visible Thinking—a research-based approach developed at Harvard’s Project Zero – prompts and promotes students’ thinking. This approach has been shown to positively impact student engagement, learning, and development as thinkers. Visible Thinking involves using thinking routines, documentation, and effective questioning and listening techniques to enhance learning and collaboration in any learning environment. Sourced: Ritchhart, R. and Church, M. (2020) The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Practice to engage end empower all learners. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.
Making Learning Visible: Ladder of Feedback Guide & Other Classroom Resources
Thinking Pathways: Ladder of Feedback
My Experiences with Implementation of the Making Thinking Visible Strategy of Ladder of Feedback
Lesson Overview:
- Student groups are assigned a learning target and create a multi-level digital presentation on their topic (website, slides, info-graphic, video, etc.)
- Individual students then are given all four presentations to go through themselves, completing the ladder of feedback
- Then will then use the presentations to complete a performance task unit assessment in the form of a choice board
Lesson Format:
Gallery Walk
Lesson Topic:
Industrialization, Urbanization, & Migration
Lesson Objectives/Learning Targets:
-Analyze how the rise of corporations, heavy industry, mechanized farming,
and technological innovations transformed the American economy from an
agrarian to an increasingly urban industrial society.
-Explain the major social and economic effects of industrialization and the
influence of the growth of organized labor following Reconstruction in the
United States.
-Analyze and evaluate how immigration, internal migration and urbanization transformed American life.
-Explain how continued American westward movement impacted American Indians.
MTV Strategy:
Ladder of Feedback
Ladder of Feedback Guided Notes
Reflection on Lesson:
Overall, students did very well in providing meaningful feedback. I found that giving specific examples was helpful for some students who found the open-ended questions to be challenging, and therefore plan to use example student-response sheets as models in future units.
Students were very eager to receive their peer feedback sheets, at a level higher than during previous similar lessons.
Overall, 92% of all students submitted a gallery walk reflection sheet, which is much higher than the usual daily student submission percentage.
Students were shown the Gallery Walk Ladder of Feedback questions on the second day of working on their presentation and it helped many of them increase the learning styles the presentation appealed to. Having a discussion about what their peers want to learn helped them add in graphics, videos, text, and other resources to help aide their classmates learning.
Moving forward, I would like to continue to use this strategy for gallery walks and student presentation feedback. I would like to implement this tool into my curriculum earlier next school year so that the students are more comfortable with it. I may have them complete one of these tools on a lesson that I teach first, then moving into them using it on their peers work. This will become a consistent tool used in my classroom for years to come.
Alignment of MTV Strategy and TCE Threshold Concepts
Teaching & Learning Honors Peoples Full Humanity
- By having students engage in peer feedback on a deeper level, we are building their ability to reflect on their own learning. Asking questions starting as simple as “what were you unsure about” or “could you answer the learning target with this information” allows them to assess their own comprehension levels, building their metacognition skills. By doing so, we are building creative and critical thinkers. We are avoiding the trope of passive learners in a classroom and we are engaging them in the fundamentals of lesson planning and design. We are showing them that they have a voice in how they learn and that their work is important and meaningful enough for others to provide feedback on it. By working in groups knowing that feedback is coming from classmates students are challenged to use their strengths and skills to make classroom materials that they would want to see. As they grow and develop, this can develop into them thinking critically about their future place of employment, the way they interact with others, and ultimately the place they play in society.
- Allowing students to create materials, assess the effectiveness of those classroom materials, provide meaningful structured feedback on their peer’s learning materials we are adding an element of humanity to the classroom. They are challenged to provide constructive criticism, compare and contrast their work with others, and communicate. These are skills that are essential to 21st century learners and skills that help build equity in classrooms across the country.
“In Order to Teach You, I Must Know You”
-Lisa Delpit
Curriculum is co-constructed
- This lesson strongly aligns with the idea of curriculums being co-constructed. The students are given materials chosen by the teacher to gather information from regarding a specific topic, which has a strong influence from the teacher. The educators role here is to ensure that the materials are credible, reliable, lack bias and align with the curriculum.
- The role then switches to the students. After they have build their foundation of understanding they are able to decide how they want to demonstrate their comprehension and the leadership role transitions back to them. Teachers release control of the classroom and let students make their own decisions. The educator plays a support role here, monitoring the classroom and answering questions. Educators must make sure that they give students space to develop their own ideas and not “run and in save the day” with the answer or idea for presentation. Teachers observe the ways students are thinking, collaborating, communicating, and demonstrating.
- The gallery walk portion is led by students and is the ultimate collaboration between teacher and student. The educator provides the ladder of feedback tool and then the students think critically about other presentations.
- This strategy helps students take more initiative in their learning and understanding of content. It allows educators to be a supporter of student learning. Teachers are about to learn from their students by listening to feedback and taking note of how they create the learning materials for others. By allowing students to plan their own lessons we are building their ability to think critically about other lessons and the world around them. It requires students to know themselves and develop their skills while also allowing teachers to assess their own learning tools and make adjustments that better align with what students wants.
“A hallmark for me of a culturally relevant teacher is someone who understands that we’re operating in a fundamentally inequitable system — they take that as a given. And that the teacher’s role is not merely to help kids fit into an unfair system, but rather to give them the skills, the knowledge and the dispositions to change the inequity. The idea is not to get more people at the top of an unfair pyramid; the idea is to say the pyramid is the wrong structure. How can we really create a circle, if you will, that includes everybody?”
-Gloria Ladson-Billings
Resources, Discussions, Supplemental Materials, etc.
Hi Miranda! What a wonderful blog post and strategy you used! I really appreciate you including the rubric with the ladder of feedback that students filled out. This is an excellent tool to guide your students to complete feedback and I agree with your point about curriculum being co-constructed- this MTV strategy really does give students the power in their learning and allows them to provide feedback to their peers. I did have a question: did students orally share their feedback to their peers or did they just give them the rubric paper that they had filled out? I think a conversation about it with the peer to whom they gave feedback would also be helpful! I absolutely love this tool and I am excited that you said you are going to be utilizing it in your classroom for years to come. I need to figure out how to do this with my 3rd graders! Great work this week!
Hello!
I found your ladder of feedback overview very helpful! I love for students to give feedback to their peers but I find it hard to explain helpful feedback that can improve their peers’ work. Trying to get students out of the “good job” phrase can be challenging. But the ladder of feedback image is perfect and it includes sentence starters which can be so helpful for students. Also, providing students with visuals always helps and gives them a quick reminder.
I liked how you related students honoring each other’s humanity through valuable feedback. I often kept thinking of it from a teacher’s perspective of making sure to listen to your students. Honest and purposeful feedback is a great way to honor their peers’ humanity because they are listening and providing insight.
Thank you for sharing!