Collaboration Norms:

• Keep posts respectful and professional.

• Share student work without names for privacy.

• Keep posts short and simple — don’t worry about being “perfect.”

• Support each other with comments, likes, or resources.

One challenge we noticed was that students became very excited and sometimes got caught up in “fighting” for their side, rather than debating thoughtfully. By re-centering, using sentence stems, and having a pre-discussion about why we are exploring these make-believe scenarios, students were able to engage meaningfully, listen to different perspectives, and articulate their reasoning clearly.

being used as a tool for reflective thinking during the sorting out phase in the inquiry cycle.

G1 students stepped inside Reubin, a character in a story who really wants a bike like his friend Sergio’s, but cannot have one because his family is poor. Then, one day, he finds and keeps a 100-dollar bill.

The responses were eye-opening. Students expressed everything from excitement about hands-on activities to concerns about timing, meals, and staying with friends. Their “Need to Knows” highlighted the practical details they were still curious about, while their “Suggestions” gave us great ideas for teamwork and responsibility.

We then brought these points into our Community Circle, where we addressed concerns, clarified logistics, and reassured students about their worries. This helped create a sense of shared ownership and responsibility for the trip.

The Compass Points routine proved to be a really useful tool for student voice, allowing us to surface both the excitement and the anxieties around the experience. By naming these ahead of time, we could move forward as a group feeling prepared, supported, and ready to enjoy the learning opportunity.

I show the students the first image of a fire in Paris. I then show them both photos together and point out that these are both unedited photos of the same fire taken at the same time. I then ask students the "I used to think ... How I think...." prompt.

I got a lot of interesting observations about the meaning of the images, such as "I thought the fire was larger than the people, but now I see the fire is quite small."

More excitingly, I got a lot of interesting media literacy observations and questions from students. Some highlights are "A photo can be "real" (unedited) but still be "fake" (misleading). " "how do we know if information is "real" if we can't tell by looking?"

I'm interested if any of the thinking routines can be applied to a fact checking routine. Most are about discussing opinions and viewpoints, but not about specifically evaluating information.

As a class, we first modelled this with Arty the Troll from a version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff that we read, retold from the troll’s perspective. Together, we discussed what he saw, heard, smelled, felt, and touched; what he was thinking; how he was feeling; and what he did in the story.

In groups, students then applied the same task to their chosen fable and character, brainstorming to shift their viewpoint and explore their character’s experiences in their new stories.

Students were highly engaged and began to see their characters as complex individuals with feelings, motivations, and unique perspectives. These brainstorms will guide them as they begin drafting their retellings, helping them stay true to their character’s perspective and voice..

As we step into a new month, let’s continue building our practice with Visible Thinking Routines.

What did you notice about your students’ thinking when you used Tug of War (or other VTR), and how might this shape your next steps in incorporating Visible Thinking Routines?

Please take a moment to add your reflection here—whether it’s a sentence, a story, or even a photo of student work. Every contribution helps us learn from each other and celebrate the deep thinking happening across our school.

• Lesson 1: Focused on Lauren Singer’s Why I Live a Zero Waste Life. Students worked in groups, each with a lens (purpose & audience, structure & style, evidence & persuasion, values & assumptions, or impact & action). They produced posters with their claim (e.g. “Lauren shows purpose and audience really well”), their support (specific evidence such as the “trash jar” or her fridge story), and then crafted a prompting question designed to help peers apply her techniques to their own speeches (e.g. “How could you use humor in your speech to connect with the audience?”).

• Lesson 2: shifted from group to individual analysis using Greta Thunberg’s speech. Students repeated the Claim–Support–Question process independently, but this time their questions were tailored to transfer Greta’s techniques into their own speech prep. For example: Claim: Greta’s speech is powerful because she uses short, urgent phrases. Support: She repeats “How dare you” to emphasize her anger. Question: “How could you use repetition to add urgency to your own OREO speech?”

We chose the Claim–Support–Question routine because it pushes students beyond opinion into evidence-based reasoning. It slowed them down to make a clear claim about how a speech works, support it with specific examples. This helped students move from simply saying they liked the two speeches to understanding why they were effective.

By adapting the question element into a “prompting question” for peers, the routine also bridged analysis with action, guiding students to apply the techniques directly to their own TEDx speeches. While the written responses were not yet in great detail, this was an important early step in a year-long process of building G5A’s analytical skills.

• Think: “What is this person doing?”

• Feel: “How do you think they feel when they do their job?”

• Care: “What can we do to take care of them or say thank you?”

Students also explored how helpers reach people in need, the vehicles they use in emergencies, where they go to provide support, and how they help during trouble. This activity helped them connect the concepts of responsibility, care, and community support with the role of transportation in our society.

To help get started, I modeled a sentence such as, “I am thinking of going to the beach as a fisher.” Then students used sentence starters like “I think…” and “A question I have is…” to decide whether that character would view going to the beach as a need or a want.

It sparked a wonderful discussion and even encouraged some students to raise their hands who don’t always feel confident sharing in front of the whole class!

Using the Visual Thinking Strategy Tug of War, we discussed the question, “Is space exploration worth the cost and risk?” Students physically positioned themselves in the classroom according to how strongly they felt about the statement, then shared and justified their perspectives. I introduced additional “tugs” to present alternative viewpoints, encouraging students to listen, reflect, and reconsider their stance.

By the end of the activity, many students maintained their original position, while a few shifted after hearing new perspectives. This experience helped students understand that exploration often involves complex and diverse viewpoints, deepening their appreciation for the concept of perspective.

When students started connecting and elaborating on their ideas, the conversations became much deeper. They just finished an activity where they could see how one system affects another, and so they could start reflecting on how habits affect them in the same way, and what mattered most to them personally. By the end, they weren’t just listing habits, they were choosing one that felt important in their own lives and forming questions to guide their research. This routine really helped them sift through all their ideas and take ownership of their learning in a thoughtful, purposeful way.

In particular, integrating these routines have helped students slow down their thinking, look beneath surface details, and build connections across subjects. I’m seeing more evidence of transfer — students drawing on thinking language from previous units and applying it to new contexts.

This month, my focus is on:

• Depth over variety: Selecting one or two routines and using them repeatedly so students can internalize the moves.

• Connecting past and future learning: Encouraging students to identify “seeds for new thinking” — ideas or questions that link to prior units or spark curiosity for what’s ahead.

Moving forward, I want to find effective ways to assess the thinking as learning.

We began by reading The Good Egg and discussing how the characters work together and share space respectfully. Students were then introduced to the thinking routine Claim, Support, Question. Using scenarios that showed people making poor choices in public spaces, students first made a claim about what the person should do instead. Next, they supported their idea with reasons that explained why this behavior is important in a community. Finally, they generated questions that might arise from the situation.

This routine encouraged students not only to identify safe and respectful choices, but also to explain why those choices matter to others. It helped them connect their thinking to the bigger idea of how communities stay safe, supportive, and organized when everyone contributes in positive ways.

The final step, Act, was the most challenging. Students generated verbs to show how the objects might “act,” even though many were inanimate. This required critical and creative thinking, as they explored movement, function, and personification.

- Wonder (about landforms)

- Connection (to community)

- Care (for the future).

These guide students to think in different ways about the topic. By placing their questions in these sections, students can see how questions can move from simple factual inquiries (e.g., “How does a cave form?”) to deeper, more complex thinking (e.g., “What does plate movement affect in our lives?” or “How can we make sure oceans don’t get polluted?”).

This structure helps students understand that strong questions often connect ideas, consider impact, or explore cause and effect. As an introductory lesson to landforms, it encourages curiosity, builds background knowledge, and models how thoughtful questioning can deepen learning from the very beginning of a unit.

Students used the following thinking routine foundations as they worked on their persuasive writing. The task had been designed to have students asking questions as they reached each step of the project, from understanding what the Rahman family is looking for, all the way to thinking about how they can use their knowledge of the world and landforms to make connections that would convince the Rahman family to move to their chosen location.

1. Claim–Evidence–Reasoning

• What is your claim?

• What evidence supports it?

• Why does that matter for the family?

2. “Would This Work?” Filter

• Would this place work for the Rahman family?

• Why / why not?

3. Perspective Questions

• How might a child feel living here?

• How might a parent feel?

• Would everyone in the family agree?

Canva has some new whiteboard templates that can be useful for making thinking visible.

Throughout the activity, students thought deeply about what it truly means to innovate, why humans innovate, and the impact innovation can have on people, society, and the environment. As students listened to different viewpoints and responded to new tugs, many reconsidered and adjusted their thinking. By the end of the discussion, most students concluded that there should be a balance between preserving important traditions, history, and existing ideas, while also remaining open to meaningful improvements and new possibilities. Students recognized that innovation can help solve problems and improve lives, but that change should happen thoughtfully without dismissing or “ruining” valuable things from the past.