• ABOUT
• BOOKS
• REGISTER

Making Thinking Visible
with Ron Ritchhart

Over the last decade there has been an ever-increasing interest in how teachers can foster deep learning and promote students’ thinking. The use of thinking routines, a practice originating from the researchers at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has emerged as a key practice in supporting these goals. Thinking routines can not only scaffold and support students in thinking, but also can help to make that thinking more visible to both students and teachers. All of this leads to more responsive instruction. Not surprisingly, as the use of thinking routines has become more popular as a teaching practice, they sometimes get used superficially or as simple activities. However, the real power of thinking routines comes from using them to establish patterns of thinking in the classroom, but how do teachers move beyond the use of routines as good activities to their establishment as patterns of thinking? What do classrooms look like when such patterns take hold? How can we use thinking routines to maximum effect?

In this seminar series, participants will have a chance to learn how teachers are working with thinking routines to transform their classrooms into cultures of thinking, and to use the routines themselves to see how they work as tools for all learners. Specifically, participants will explore:

• How thinking routines function as tools, scaffolds, structures, and patterns.
• What thinking routines look like in action across different year levels and subjects.
• Using thinking routines for our own learning
• Using thinking routines to engage students with each other, with ideas, and in action.
• The types of thinking that are important to promote if our goal is developing understanding and deep learning.
• How teachers can use thinking routines to maximum effect.
• The role thinking routines can play in our assessment practice.

Ron Ritchhart

Ron Ritchhart is a Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator at Harvard Project Zero where his work focuses on the development of school and classroom culture as prime vehicles for developing students’ as powerful thinkers and learners. Ron’s most recent book, Creating Cultures of Thinking, takes readers inside a diverse range of learning environments to show how teachers create classrooms where thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted as part of the day to day experience of all group members. Howard Gardner has called the book “ a tour de force” for Ron’s ability to seamlessly merge theory, research, practice and application together in a highly accessible and engaging manner.

Ron's research and writings have informed the work of schools, school systems, and museums throughout the world. His book Making Thinking Visible, co-written with Mark Church and Karin Morrison, has popularized the use of thinking routines to facilitate deep learning and high engagement. Ron and Mark Church have just finished a new book, The Power of Making Thinking Visible, in which they introduce a new set of routines and share what they have learned about the successful integration of thinking routines as a powerful teaching tool.