Text for Teachers at Grades 4-12
Making Thinking Visible: How To Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners
by Ron Ritchart, Karin Morrison, and Mark Church
Preview "Making Thinking Visible" online
“To make sure thinking isn’t left to chance and to provide us with the information we need in order to respond to students’ learning needs, we must make their thinking visible.”
How can classrooms become places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed not in test scores, but in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners?
Making Thinking Visible offers educators research-based solutions for creating just such cultures of thinking. This innovative book unravels the mysteries of thinking and explores its connection to understanding and engagement.
It is rare to find literature that proposes a fundamental change for instructional practice, but Making Thinking Visible does just that. Moving beyond theory, the authors take readers inside diverse learning environments to show how thinking can be made visible at any grade level – and across all subject areas – through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called “thinking routines.” These thinking routines, designed by researchers at Project Zero at Harvard University, serve to scaffold, support, and extend the cognitive process.
When teachers apply these routines and practices in the classroom, thinking becomes visible as students express, document, discuss, and reflect upon their viewpoints and thought processes. The experience can be transformative in nature: students rediscover their natural curiosity, and educators rediscover the joyous dichotomy of being both learner and teacher at the same time.
The textbook also includes a DVD of instructive video clips that show visible thinking strategies being applied in a variety of classroom settings.
"Making Thinking Visible is essential reading for every educator who strives to provide students with the skills they need to become thoughtful and enthusiastic directors of their own learning." —Tina Blythe
Updated: May 12, 2023