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.