Summary
Making Thinking Visible for TCE 623
The power of making thinking visible is an impactful and incredible tool for educators. At first I was concerned that some of these strategies would be difficult for the types of students I teach, which our students with disabilities (SWD). Oftentimes my students struggle with deeper thinking skills and sometimes this gets them to shut down and is the barrier to participation in the class. However, as I learn more about this concept, I am more and more excited about how this can work for my students! It turns traditional instruction on its side, and really opens up many opportunities for them to participate.
• Making thinking visible is interactive: Interactive lessons engage students more and SWDs can
access this interactive instruction with minor adjustments to accommodate a variety of learners.
• Making thinking visible explicitly teaches deeper thinking: SWDs often need this explicit
instruction to learn new skills and MTV imbeds this instruction into the concept naturally.
• Making thinking visible builds skills for students where they are: Students need some prior
knowledge, but the strategies allow deeper thinking to grow from where an individual student,
which allows for greater personal growth for SWDs as they are not expected to meet a standard,
per se, just grow their own thinking skills.
Another blog from the Dyslexia Association of Singapore talks about MTV and summarizes three great points on how to incorporate the strategy:
(1) Questioning: We can allow students to create their own questions at their level.
(2) Listening: We can allow students to listen using accommodations, such as ASL interpreters.
(3) Documenting: We can have student access documentation tools such as Google Read/Write.
Check out the rest of the DAofS Blog here.
This past week, I tried the MTV strategy NDA, or Name-Describe-Act. We are working on an opinion piece regarding zoo animals. So I grabbed a few zoo animals and put them on a tray covered with a napkin. It really reminded me of that birthday party memory game we used to play as kids!
I gave the students about a minute to just look at the object covered it back up. I had given them a few post it notes if they wanted to jot ideas down or I just allowed them to discuss the object and details that they saw. I loved how they described the animals and some of them even noticed something new or unique. I loved the strategy because everyone was engaged. It was a benefit in the following ways.
• All of my students were able to participate
• Students were excited about the task
• Students noticed things from their own perspective
This engaged students and also prompted some fun discussion about the zoo. In addition, I noticed that after we completed our paragraph of the week work that their writing had actually started to improve! Now whether or not this was directly related to implementing this strategy, or that it is starting to click from the last five weeks of work that we’ve done on paragraph writing….that is hard to say. But I loved that I did something different this week and that students were excited about the activity.
Click HERE to access the one-sheet from Project Zero on the activity.
There are also some great ideas about thinking routines in this video HERE!
The MTV concepts encompass the following TCE Thresholds:
- Curriculum is more than standards, textbooks, and of courses of study: When we use MTV, we move beyond just learning the information or standards and we are really teaching students the critical thinking skills that are necessary to be successful adults and impact their world. At my school we have some really high performing kids and we have students with disabilities who struggle to access the general curriculum. Focusing on teaching these critical thinking skills, in my opinion, creates a more equitable school community.
- Teaching and learning to honor people’s full humanity: Using MTV, as I just mentioned, can create a more equitable school community. This helps to honor our students where they are. It takes them from their own skill set and improves it from there. I think that this can help students feel more confident and prouder of their accomplishments, instead of feeling frustrated that they might not be learning the material in the same way as other students.
Check out my X tweet!