Use Visible Thinking Routines to enhance students learning

Thinking routines are the patterns by which teachers and students interact and club together in a classroom environment to deepen their understanding about the topic. Thinking routines are the cornerstones for engaging and involving students in their classroom activities and tools for teachers to follow their students’ thinking processes that help them discover their knowledge, misconceptions, reasoning ability, and understanding.

Visible thinking routines exist in all the classrooms. These routines improve the ability to learn, increase the ease of mastering a skill, and provide motivation to continue learning. These routines allow students to quickly accomplish day-to-day tasks. Routines also help to create smoother transitions between activities. These routines remind us that learning is a process of understanding but not a product. We should encourage our students to verbalize and explain what they’re learning, as well as what is working and what’s not. Visible Thinking helps in the following way:

• Learners understand content more deeply.
• Motivation for learning.
• Developing thinking and learning abilities
• Make learners more alert to use their thinking.
• Develops learner’s attitude towards thinking.

Following are some visible thinking routines that one can use in order to promote learners’ thinking and classroom learning:

1. Step Inside
2. Headlines
3. Tug of War
4. Parts Purpose Complexities
5. Question Starts
6. Question Sorts
7. Sentence Phrase Words
8. Option Explosion
9. Stop Look Listen
10. What makes you say that?
11. Stop/Traffic Light
12. Color Symbol Image
13. Think Pair Share
14. Compass Point
15. Think Puzzle Explore
16. I used to think, but now I think
17. See Think Wonder
18. Chalk Talk
19. Zoom In
20. The Explanation Game
21. 3 2 1 Bridge
22. Circles of View Points
23. The 4 C’s
24. The 3 Y’s
25. Peel The Fruit

There are many more visible thinking routines available, to know more about them or to get the deeper understanding of these visible thinking routines log on to:

https://www.deepdesignthinking.com/visible-thinking-routines

https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines