Culture+of+Thinking

=Culture of Thinking =

 We have been looking at visible thinking for the last couple of years and we have all seen the impact it can make on our classrooms.

 Here is a link to the Visible Thinking website, a wonderful resource for all

[|Visible Thinking Website]

 This page has been created to share resources and some of our current practices that link to our understanding of visible thinking. Feel free to contribute all you can!

 I went looking for video resources on youtube and came across the following - it has the concept keys and David Perkins, I think there must be better videos out there - I know they are on the above website, but can anyone find any more?

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Cultures of Thinking Project 2005 Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education Ron Ritchhart & David Perkins Co-Principal Investigators Six Key Principles of the Cultures of Thinking Project **1. Skills are not sufficient; we must also have the disposition to use them**. Possessing thinking skills and abilities alone is insufficient for good thinking. One must also have the disposition to use those abilities. This means schools must develop students’ inclination to think and awareness of occasions for thinking as well as their thinking skills and abilities. Having a disposition toward thinking enhances the likelihood that one can effectively use one’s abilities in new situations. **2. The development of thinking and understanding is fundamentally a social** **endeavor**, taking place in a cultural context and occurring within the constant interplay between the group and the individual. Social situations that provide experience in communicating oneʼs own thinking as well as opportunities to understand othersʼ thinking enhance individual thinking. **3. The culture of the classroom teaches.** It not only sets a tone for learning, but also determines what gets learned. The messages sent through the culture of the classroom communicate to students what it means to think and learn well. These messages are a curriculum in themselves, teaching students how to learn and ways of thinking. **4. As educators, we must strive to make students thinking visible.** It is only by making thinking visible that we can begin to understand both what and how our students are learning. Under normal conditions, a studentʼs thinking is invisible to other students, the teacher, and even to him/herself, because people often think with little awareness of how they think. By using structures, routines, probing questions, and documentation we can make studentsʼ thinking more visible toward fostering better thinking and learning. **5. Good thinking utilizes a variety of resources and is facilitated by the use of** **external tools to “download” or “distribute” oneʼs thinking**. Papers, logs, computers, conversation, and various means of recording and keeping track of ideas and thoughts free the mind up to engage in new and deeper thinking. **6. For classrooms to be cultures of thinking for students, schools must be** **cultures of thinking for teachers.** The development of a professional community in which deep and rich discussions of teaching, learning, and thinking are a fundamental part of teachersʼ ongoing experience provides the foundation for nurturing studentsʼ thinking and learning.

Web Links Visible Thinking: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/vt Project Zero: http://pz.harvard.edu Artful Thinking: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/at