Visible Thinking is an approach to integrating the development of students' thinking skills with content learning across subjects. It uses practices like Thinking Routines, which are short strategies to extend and deepen students' thinking, and Thinking Ideals, which are concepts that propel thinking. The goals are to cultivate students' thinking dispositions and abilities, deepen understanding of content, increase motivation for learning, and shift the classroom culture to a community of engaged thinkers.

1. Visible Thinking

2. What is Visible Thinking?
Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based
approach to integrating the development of students'
thinking with content learning across subject matters. An
extensive and adaptable collection of practices, Visible
Thinking has a double goal: on the one hand, to cultivate
students' thinking skills and dispositions, and, on the other,
to deepen content learning. By thinking dispositions, we
mean curiosity, concern for truth and understanding, a
creative mindset, not just being skilled but also alert to
thinking and learning opportunities and eager to take them.

3. Goals of Visible Thinking
• Deeper understanding of content
• Greater motivation for learning
• Development of learners' thinking and learning abilities.
• Development of learners' attitudes toward thinking and
learning and their alertness to opportunities for thinking
and learning (the "dispositional" side of thinking).
• A shift in classroom culture toward a community of
enthusiastically engaged thinkers and learners.

5. So what is a routine..?
• Explicit and goal-driven
• Used over and over
• Few steps
• Easy to learn and teach
• Easily supported
• Useful across a variety of contexts
• Group and individual practices

8. At the core of Visible Thinking are practices that help make thinking visible:
Thinking Routines loosely guide learners' thought processes and encourage
active processing. They are short, easy-to-learn mini-strategies that extend and
deepen students' thinking and become part of the fabric of everyday classroom
life.
Thinking Ideals are easily accessible concepts capturing naturally occurring goals,
strivings or interests that often propel our thinking. Four Ideals -- Understanding,
Truth, Fairness and Creativity -- are presented as modules on this site.