Making Thinking Visible
Inspiration
In my science classes, I have noticed over time that students are not adept at critical thinking – that is, they seem unable to connect ideas together to reach a conclusion. They are often unable to discuss how they arrived at their solution and cannot verbalize the steps they took to solve a problem or reach a conclusion. As a result, I decided to incorporate visible thinking routines into my classroom in order to increase student critical thinking. I incorporated three different thinking routines into my classroom; these routines challenged students to go deeper and work to connect concepts to one another and to show their thinking process any time they arrived at an answer. After comparing baseline data with the test data, I saw a 14.5% increase in unit exam scores and a 25% increase in formative assessment scores. This led me to believe that visible thinking routines work for students and can help them have better scientific discussions and achieve at a higher level on exams. I will continue to use visible thinking routines in my classroom.
Project Showcase
