― Ron Ritchhart, Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools
My school, inspired by the work of Ron Ritchhart and Harvard’s Project Zero, is currently working incredibly hard to create a Culture of Thinking. Ritchhart notes six key principles of the Culture of Thinking project:
- Skills are not sufficient: we must have the disposition to use them.
- The development of thinking and understanding is fundamentally a social endeavour.
- The culture of the classroom teaches.
- As educators we must strive to make student thinking visible.
- Good thinking utilises a variety of resources.
- For classrooms to be cultures of thinking for students, schools must be cultures of thinking for teachers.
Through 'Visible Thinking Routines', amongst other things, we as a community of educators are grabbing hold of powerful learning opportunities to maximise student potential.
Over the coming weeks I wish to share with you some examples of how I am using 'Visible Thinking Routines' to create a Culture of Thinking in my classroom. As suggested these routines should become ‘routine’. I have commenced this process through visual prompts for both my students and I to utilise in class.
Below are the prompts that I have printed and laminated for my classroom. They display the Core Routines. Detailed descriptions of each routine can be found here. These ideas are not my own, but a valuable resource which I believe should be shared and widely embraced. Please feel free to print them and display them in your classroom.
(All images have been sourced from Unsplash.)