Think as a word ranks in the top 125 in terms of frequency in print.

Think is the 12th most used verb in the English language. What are we asking students to do when we tell them to THINK?

Routines for Introducing And Exploring Ideas

describing, wondering, interpreting, uncovering, questioning, distilling, observing details, building explanations
summarizing, capturing the heart, organizing, identifying connections, reasoning with evidence, taking a perspective, identifying bias, raising questions, making counterarguments, identifying complexities

Routines for Synthesizing And Organizing Ideas Routines for Digging Deeper Into Ideas

Questioning Listening Documenting

Ask questions that: Model your interest in the ideas being explored. Ask authentic questions. Construct understanding by connecting or extending ideas. Facilitate the illumination of students own thinking to themselves. Whatmakes you say that?

Model your ability to really listen and ask powerful follow up questions. Successful group interactions depend on the groups ability to listen and to respond to one anothers ideas.

Captures the events, questions, and conversations that provoke and advance learning over time. Supports learning from early childhood through secondary school. Connects the act of listening and extends it. Saving student ideas signals that the ideashave value.

Thinking routines are structures.

Thinking

routines operate as structures that support thinking. The steps of the routine act as scaffolds that help students think at a higher and more sophisticated level. These structures can be used for wholeclass or smallgroup discussions.

When thinking routines are used regularly they become part of the pattern of the classroom. Students internalize messages about what learning is and how it happens.

When teachers complain that their students are not thinking, it is often because they have been taught not to think.

Project Zero researchers have consistently found that when thinking becomes part of the daily practice of the classroom and teachers show an interest in and respect for students thinking, then students who had not previously been seen as academically strong begin to shine.

When school is no longer about the quick right answer but focuses on the expression of ones ideas, questions, and observations,
then a new playing field is created for

all students

Children grow into the intellectual life of those around them.

(Vygotsky)