The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Practices to Engage and Empower All Learners

Description

The long-awaited follow-up to Making Thinking Visible , provides new thinking routines, original research, and unique global case studies 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. The Power of Making Thinking Visible explains how educators can effectively use thinking routines and other tools to engage and empower students as learners and transform classrooms into places of deep learning. Building on the success of the bestselling Making Thinking Visible , this highly-anticipated new book expands the work of the original by providing 18 new thinking routines based on new research and work with teachers and students around the world. Original content explains how to use thinking routines to maximum effect in the classroom, engage students exploration of big ideas, link thinking routines to formative assessment, and more. Providing new research, new global case studies, and new practices, this book: Focuses on the power that thinking routines can bring to learning Provides practical insights on using thinking routines to facilitate student engagement Highlights the most effective techniques for using thinking routines in the classroom Identifies the skillsets and mindsets needed to truly make thinking visible Features actionable classroom strategies that can be applied across grade levels and content areas Written by researchers from Harvard's Project Zero, The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Practices to Engage and Empower Learners is an indispensable resource for K-12 educators and curriculum designers, higher education instructional designers and educators, and professional learning course developers. Review: A must read for teachers - If you liked Making Thinking Visible, you will love The Power of Making Thinking Visible. Imagine the authors, Ron Ritchart and Mark Church had an opportunity to study how the thinking routines, introduced on Project Zero’s Visible Thinking website and then in their book, Making Thinking Visible, were being used and the impact they have had on teaching and learning practices in classrooms. The insights they might have gained seem to have given birth to The Power of Making Thinking Visible, in which the authors guide educators towards making more profound use of the practice of Making Thinking Visible. The book makes this possible because, at the very outset, the authors pluck the practice of Making Thinking Visible from a stand-alone existence and give it a context within a culture of deep learning; a culture that endeavors to nurture critical thinkers with the dispositions necessary to strive for deep enduring learning. Always, but especially in today’s world such deep learning is vital to navigate life in a global world, enjoy its bounties, and participate in tackling its myriad problems. Deep learning should be the purpose and goal of all education. “..two ideas - understanding and thinking are core to the conception of deep learning.” With that simple statement, the authors weave the two ideas inextricably together, making understanding the result of thinking and thinking the vehicle for understanding. This idea resonates throughout the book in many ways. Chapters at the beginning of the book lay out a teaching/learning approach that aspires towards deep learning through thinking. The authors provide evidence for six fundamental ways in which such an approach is valuable, including better test results. The new routines are organized into three categories: routines to engage students with ideas, to promote intellectual interaction amongst peers, and to encourage students to translate their learning into meaningful action. Descriptions of the new routines thoughtfully guide and encourage teachers to use the thinking routines not merely as activities, but as the all important mode by which students can participate actively in constructing meaning of all they are prescribed to learn. However, the biggest benefit of this ubiquitous use of critical thinking patterns for learning is the thinking dispositions that are likely to be cultivated in students, making it possible for them to continue to be critical thinkers long after the lessons and school are over. For teachers hoping to transform the teaching and learning dynamic in the classroom so that they can work as a team with their students and empower each other to aspire for deep learning, this is a must read book! Vaijayanti Wagle Review: A powerful read! - This book should be on every educator's bookshelf. It provides an insightful and thorough examination of how making thinking visible enables and empowers learners. This book touches on building understanding, formative assessments, thinking dispositions, and more. The book includes more than a dozen thinking routines that teachers can put into practice in their classrooms immediately in order to foster deep learning. As a classroom teacher, the explanation and examples of both new and (a few) familiar thinking routines are a highlight. This is an invaluable resource! I highly recommend it to teachers, administrators, and educators.