Making Thinking Visible!

When it comes to the classroom, what is the ultimate goal of engagement? On one hand, you may have students that are so eager to answer a question, they may blurt out an answer before you are done asking the question. You may see some students waving their hand eccentrically in order to be called on. Is that every student though, or are some students disengaged through boredom, not knowing the answer, or knowing they won’t get called on? Through the Power of Making Thinking Visible, teachers are able to address all students in a fair and equitable way that encourages student voice.

Main Points of Making thinking Visible:

• Student voice: From students in a classroom to teachers in a PD, participation and engagement can seem more like a punishment than anything else for a variety of reasons. As the instructor, your purpose is to have those students (young and old) practice and demonstrate their knowledge of a topic. Through MTV practices however, you can ensure that all members are fully engaged, while staving off any anxieties towards a question or topic. MTV works to fully engage all students in a way that is equitable for everybody to share rather than relying on those who do speak up to be the sample size for a class.
  
• Thinking Routines: Making Thinking Visible is not just about what we think about, but rather, learning how we think. When you are in math class, you probably have different ways of thinking than in gym class, but how often do we as people recognize that? MTV not only helps what we think, but gives us the appropriate tools for how we think in order to build understanding of a topic. We as teachers do need to support and scaffold these thinking routines, because building routines takes time, but ultimately pay off in the long run. For some of these resources and tools, please check out Project Zero’s toolchest https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines!
  
• Developing Thinking Dispositions: The biggest “Power” from Making Thinking Visible, is the power of growth for students and adults. Never in my schooling had I been asked how I thought, or the best way of learning for me. I just assumed that what we were doing in class was what every other student in every school did, and if you didn’t like it, oh well. There was very little sense of self or individualism. MTV however, has teachers building student’s dispositions by pushing through different thinking move or practice. With each practice, we can fine tune how we think/learn, in order to now know how to think for different situations. A great example of a MTV strategy and developing dispositions can be seen below!

Making Thinking Visible in my classroom

For my class we did a Think-Pair-Share, with the question being “What does freedom look like/mean to you?” as we will be starting on the American Revolution coming soon. While I am used to doing a turn and talk, I wanted to make sure I was precise with the directions for the TPS, since it requires a bit more though put into it. First, students were naturally divided into groups of 2-3 based on desk arrangement. Prior to the question being asked, students were encouraged to jot down notes as they thought. Once the question was given, students had 45 seconds to think it over. The first person was then expected to talk for a full 20 seconds (timer was on the board for all of this) about what they thought. The second person was encouraged to jot notes on what their partner said. This was repeated two more times for the second and third partners before students were cold called on what their partner said. As students were being cold called, I wrote their replies on the board. After 4 random students, I opened the floor to volunteers.

This strategy seemed to work well with my classes. Even the class that I am typically hesitant to try new things with due to some behavioral issues, still did well with this and everybody seemed to enjoy it. The big success from this is that everybody was engaging and actually using the 45 seconds of think time to…think! Students were jotting notes down, and once they had a chance to speak, they were on topic. One thing I was not expecting was the depth of answers, which I attribute to how I phrased the question. In the end, they are still middle school students, so answers varied from “no rules, I can do anything” to listing a few of the amendments, and even a sketched pictured of an eagle holding a hamburger. Something I would have done differently is phrase the question that would lead into constitutional rights, like “How are rights earned?”. I feel like this question could pose many discussions that would challenge students philosophies on modern politics.

TCE Thresholds:

• Teaching and learning honor people’s full humanity: To honor people’s full humanities, we must build and develop their own humanity and sense of self. Through MTV, teachers helps students understand themselves and how they think in a way to better serve the student. Within my school, these MTV strategies aim to target those who do not know the answer or feel too shy to participate in a way that holds students accountable to not only think, but to listen as well. Within the community, parents and guardians are now able to see how their student thinks. Not only does this help the student, but can relieve a lot of frustration from the guardian who may be trying to help their student with work.
  
• Teaching is/an intellectual engagement: When you think of an assembly line, does it spark thoughts of intellectual stimulus? If you said no, please think of a lecture or textbook based classroom. Yes you may be intaking new information, but how long does it stick, and more importantly, what is the main goal for the students? Through MTV, there must be engagement with topic that can appeal to anybody. That engagement can serve as the buy in for the student whose opinion and actual thoughts are being asked to share out. In the classroom, student voice is vital for discussion and coming one’s personal understanding or disposition on a topic. It’s one thing to say that the British were bad for raising taxes, but to ask if their motivations were in the wrong could spark a conversation that goes well beyond the Stamp Act and into real life quandaries. Even by having two students debate motivations, this allows other students to not just listen peers in a student led dialogue that typically would not come up in typical middle school discussions. Within the community, these conversations can be taken home to further student’s depth of understanding through questioning their guardians position. Through this intellectual engagement, students can take reasonings from the classroom and apply that to everyday life! For more reasons to have student engagement and voice, I encourage you to check out this blog post from former educator and freelance write, Larry Bernstein https://xello.world/en/blog/student-engagement/what-is-student-engagement/