See. Think. Wonder. Share.

I’ve been reading about Harvard’s Visible Thinking routines and have been searching for ways to increase the amount of student thinking and collaborative talking time in my classes. My new mantra is “more them, less me” inspired by Sugata Mitra and James Surowiecki. During my reading about the routines, I realised that I had already been using many of them on an ad hoc, less focused basis without really knowing it. So now I am making a conscious effort to improve the student’s opportunities for thinking time by using the routines in an open and transparent way.

This week I am starting a new unit with the six Prep classes (five-to-six year olds). In their homerooms they are currently working on a unit with the following Central Idea:

Knowing about family histories enables us to discover our cultural origins and develop historical awareness.

As the Performing Arts specialist, I am focusing on the concepts of Form (What is it like?) and Change (How is it changing?) as well as the related concept of History. We are starting by investigating the changes in how people listen to music. I chose to use one of the Core Routines, See, Think, Wonder, to enhance a ‘Tuning In’ provocation.

I began by introducing the thinking routine to the students, explaining that it was going to help us to make observations and start to inquire about something new. I introduced the three questions:

1. 
   

What do you see?

1. 
   

What do you think about that?

1. What does it make you wonder?
   

We then completed a guided routine as a whole class, with me scribing their thoughts. I explained from the very beginning that there was no right or wrong answer and that we were purely collecting our thoughts at this stage.

The next step was to divide the students into groups and give each group a picture to think about. Of course I know that this learning engagement would have been dramatically improved had I been able to acquire the real artefacts, rather than pictures. Anyway, on this occasion I let the students choose their own groups of three or four. I asked them to try to focus on the three questions and to use the prompts: 

1. I see … 

2. I think …

3. I wonder …

The students quickly started sharing their thoughts and there was an immediate buzz in the room. They were describing, hypothesising and posing questions to each other.

The next step was to bring the group conversations back to the whole group. Eager to incorporate technology into my classroom whenever I can in a meaningful way, I set up a VoiceThread for each class. Here the students recorded their thoughts verbally. I am beginning to see so much value in using VoiceThread with students of this age. It gave them the opportunity to record their thoughts immediately without having to worry about writing it down. The students were eager to take a turn at recording their own voice and loved hearing it play back afterwards! Using Voicethread has proven to be dynamic and accessible for the students. I plan to refer back to these with the students at the end of the unit to aid reflections about their learning.

http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=2980850

#Thinking