This chapter discusses making thinking visible in the classroom. It defines thinking as involving various processes beyond just memorization, including understanding, reasoning with evidence, perspective taking, and questioning. The author argues Bloom's taxonomy is too linear and that understanding results from applying, analyzing, and evaluating information, rather than being a precursor. The chapter also outlines different types of thinking teachers should aim to engage students in, such as pattern identification, perspective taking, and self-regulation. It concludes by discussing the importance of developing students' metacognition and awareness of their own thinking processes.

1. Chapter 1
Unpacking Thinking
Summary and My Take-a-ways

2. Making it visible to ourselves
We ask/tell our students to "think", but what does
that mean?
What do we want them to do?
What does "thinking" mean to me?
- - - - - hmmmmmm……- - - -
If we are going to make thinking visible in our
classrooms, FIRST step will be for us as a teacher to
make the various forms, dimensions, and process of
thinking visible to ourselves

3. BEYOND BLOOM
➔ Bloom's taxonomy suggests that thinking is a linear progression,
but it's not. Why is "understanding" toward the bottom of the
revised Bloom's?
➔ “…understanding is not a precursor to application, analysis,
evaluating, and creating but a result of it.”
➔ Is understanding a type of thinking or an outcome of thinking?
➔ Classrooms tend to be places of "tell & practice", not much (if any)
thinking.

4. BEYOND MEMORIZATION, WORK AND ACTIVITY
➔ Understanding is the chief goal of thinking!
➔ Retention of information through rote practice isn't learning, it is training!
➔ Playing a review game or doing other activities may be fun, but still not likely to
develop understanding. Hands on does not mean minds on.
➔ Work & activity not synonymous with learning
➔ To develop understanding of a subject, you need to have authentic intellectual
activity.
➔ “In most school settings, educators have focused more on the completion of work
and assignments than on a true development of understanding.”

5. Over the course of a unit, students should be engaged in all of the
integral thinking moves:
1. Observing closely and describing what's there
2. Building explanations and interpretations
3. Reasoning with evidence
4. Making connections
5. Considering different viewpoints & perspectives
6. Capturing the heart and forming conclusions
7. Wondering & asking questions
8. Uncovering complexity and going below the surface
A Map of Thinking Involved in Understanding

6. Structured
reflection
Analysis
Connection
Perspective
Reflection that goes beyond
voicing one’s opinion or
feelings - involves describing
the object of reflection and
noticing its key features,
connecting what is new to
what one already knows and
examination of the event or
object of reflection through
various lenses or frames
which is perspective taking
(Coby et al)

7. Activity idea (pg 16)
Create a concept map on 'What is
thinking?' However, don't stress if student
answers aren't great - most students
haven't been taught to think about
thinking.

8. OTHER KINDS OF
THINKING
1. Identifying patterns and making
generalizations
2. Generating possibilities and
alternatives
3. Evaluating evidence, arguments
and actions
4. Formulating plans and monitoring
actions
5. Identifying claims, assumptions and
bias
6. Clarifying priorities, conditions, and
what is known

9. Uncovering Students’ Thinking About
Thinking
➔ To be properly metacognitive, then, students have to be
realistically aware of their own cognitive resources in
relation to the task demands and then to plan, monitor and
control those resources - Biggs
➔ Awareness of one’s own learning process and one’s control
over them (meta-learning) or
➔ Knowledge about the strategies one has at one’s disposal
to facilitate and direct one’s own learning (meta-strategic
knowledge)

10. The Cultures of Thinking Research
Students responses might be grouped into:
1. Memory and knowledge-based strategies
2. General and nonspecific strategies
3. Self-regulation and motivation strategies
4. Specific thinking and strategies and process

11. My Take-a-ways
● Deepen my own understanding about the types of thinking beyond
surface learning
● What types of thinking I want my students to do?
● Do the activities I have planned provide opportunities to develop
understanding through the thinking I intend?
● How can I develop the culture of thinking research with my students?
● As an educator, what can I do to develop the metacognition of my
students?