Presentation from NCSS 2017

1. EXPLORING
MARGINALIZED PEOPLE
THROUGH THE LENS OF
VISIBLE THINKING
ROUTINES
NCSS 2017

2. Presenters
Dr. Susan Santoli Dr. Paige Vitulli
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Associate Professor
University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL
ssantoli@southalabama.edu pvitulli@southalabama.edu
Dr. Susan DuBose
Alabama Bicentennial Education Coordinator
Alabama Department of Archives and History
Montgomery AL
Susan.Dubose@archives.alabama.gov

3. PROJECT ZERO
“Project Zero was founded by the philosopher Nelson Goodman at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education in 1967 to study and improve education in the arts.”
“Goodman believed that arts learning should be studied as a serious cognitive activity,
but that “zero” had yet been firmly established about the field; hence the project was
given its name.”
http://www.pz.harvard.edu/who-we-are/about

4. One Aspect of Project Zero is the Visible
Thinking Routines
At the core of Visible Thinking are practices that help make thinking visible:
Thinking Routines loosely guide learners' thought processes and encourage
active processing.

5. Key Goals of Visible Thinking Routines
• 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.

6. Categories of Routines
• Core Routines
• Understanding Routines
• Fairness Routines
• Truth Routines
• Creativity Routines

7. Artful Thinking
• The goal of the Artful Thinking program is to help students
develop thinking dispositions that support thoughtful learning –
in the arts, and across school subjects.
• The program is one of several programs at Project Zero linked by
the theme “Visible Thinking.”
• Artful Thinking has 6 interrelated components: The Artful
Thinking Palette (6 thinking dispositions at the heart of the
program); thinking routines, works of art, curricular connections,
visible thinking, and teacher study groups.

9. Artful Thinking and Making Thinking Visible
Too often, students are exposed only to the final, finished
products of thought – the finished novel or painting, the
established scientific theory, the official historical account.
They rarely see the patterns of thinking that lead to these
finished products, yet it is precisely these habits of mind
that students need to develop.
A key part of Artful Thinking involves making students’
thinking visible by documenting their unfolding thought
processes as they use thinking routines.
.

10. EXAMPLES OF
ROUTINES

11. I Used to Think, But Now I Think
Purpose: This routine helps students to reflect on their thinking
about a topic or issue and explore how and why that thinking has
changed.
• It can be useful in consolidating new learning as students identify
their new understandings, opinions, and beliefs.
• By examining and explaining how and why their thinking has
changed, students are developing their reasoning abilities and
recognizing cause and effect relationships.

12. First, observe
silently. What are
you seeing here?
Now, describe what
you see—don’t try
to tell what it means
or what you think it
is.
Now, complete this
sentence: I think
this information will
be about…
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hawp:@field(NUMBER+@band(codhawp+10032904))

13. • Have you revised or added
anything to your first
reaction?
• If so, why and what?
http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/290

14. "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a
dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has
been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres.
In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that
all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the
Indian in him, and save the man.”
According to Col. Richard Pratt's speech in 1892:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865

15. • Have you revised
or added anything
to your first
reaction?
• If so, why?
http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/290

16. "Late in the morning, my friend Judewin gave me a terrible warning. Judewin
knew a few words of English; and she had overheard the paleface woman talk
about cutting our long, heavy hair. Our mothers had taught us that only
unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy.
Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by
cowards!"......
I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the
scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids.
Then I lost my spirit".
HAVE YOU REVISED OR ADDED ANYTHING TO YOUR
FIRST REACTION? WHY?
School Days of an Indian Girl. [Atlantic Monthly./Volume 85, Issue 508, February 1900]
Recollections of an Indian
girl, Zitkala Sa

17. Have you revised or
added anything to your
first reaction? What and
why?
http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/290

18. • How to treat the original American has been a problem…since the first
settlement of this country by Europeans. As the wave of settlement rolled
farther and farther westward from the seaboard, the red man either fled before
it or stubbornly resisted its advance until it caught and overwhelmed him. The
present condition of the Indian in the far West does not greatly differ from
that of his forefathers two hundred and fifty years ago…The establishment of
the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle marks an epoch in the history of our
treatment of the red man. To the superintendent of this school…”the most
effectual way of getting civilization into the Indian is to get the Indian into
civilization.”
H
The New England Magazine Volume 0018 Issue 2 (April 1895) [pp. 224-240]
Author: Super, O. B.
Collection: Journals: New England Magazine (1886 - 1900)
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/indianschools/journal.html
Have you revised or added
anything to your first reaction?
What? Why?

19. Now, complete this sentence: I think this information was about…
Did you change your first idea?
Was there one thing you saw or read that caused you to change your
idea? Which one?

20. • This can also be used with sticky notes at the end of a
lesson as an “out the door” assessment to see what
students have learned and what misconceptions have
been changed.
• Students can attach sticky notes to a large sheet of paper
titled “I Used to Think, but Now I Think” and you can
use it over and over again or they can attach to the white
board.

21. Connect Extend Challenge
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this strategy encourage?
• The routine helps students make connections between new ideas and prior
knowledge.
• It also encourages them to take stock of ongoing questions, puzzles and
difficulties as they reflect on what they are learning.

22. • How are the ideas and information presented CONNECTED to
what you already knew?
• What new ideas did you get that EXTENDED or pushed your
thinking in new directions?
• What is still CHALLENGING or confusing for you to get your
mind around? What questions, wonderings or puzzles do you
now have?

23. Dallas County,
Alabama. Voter
Registration, 1964
● Whites Over 21:
14,400 (49%)
● Registered White
Voters: 9,195 (64%)
● Blacks Over 21:
15,115 (51%)
● Registered Black
Voters: 335 (2%)
http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/ref/collection/photo/id/5582
Connect, Extend, Challenge

24. See, Think, Wonder
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage?
• This routine helps students make careful observations and develop their own
ideas and interpretations based on what they see.
• By separating the two questions, What do you see? and What do you think
about what you see?, the routine helps students distinguish between
observations and interpretations.
• By encouraging students to wonder and ask questions, the routine stimulates
curiosity and helps students reach for new connections.

25. See, Think, Wonder
• What do you see?
• What do you think about what you see?
• What do you wonder about?

26. • What do you see?
• What do you think about what you see?
• What do you wonder about?

27. Beginning-Middle-End
If this is the middle of a story, what happened before? What might happen
next?

28. If this is the end of the story, what might have happened
before?
http://uwsslec.libguides.com/c.php?g=416691&p=2859468

29. Some other questions to consider...
• What do you hear in this picture?
• What do you smell?
• What would it be like to be in this picture?

30. • What do you hear in this picture?
• What do you smell?
• What would it be like to be in
this picture?
http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/ref/collection/photo/id
/3635

31. Step Inside
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage?
• This routine helps students to explore different perspectives and
viewpoints as they try to imagine things, events, problems, or issues
differently.
• In some cases this can lead to a more creative understanding of what is
being studied. For instance, imagining oneself as the numerator in a
fraction.
• In other settings, exploring different viewpoints can open up
possibilities for further creative exploration.

32. Step Inside
Three core questions guide students in this
routine:
• What can the person perceive?
• What might the person know about or
believe?
• What might the person care about?
OR
Take on the character of the person or
thing you’ve chosen and improvise a
monologue. Speaking in the first person,
talk about who/what you are and what you
are experiencing.
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5411d4efeab8eae72125dd35-1200-924/arsal-syrian-refugees-lebanon-4.jpg

33. Headline/Hashtag/Title Strategy
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage?
• This routine helps students capture the core or heart of the matter being
studied or discussed. It also can involve them in summing things up and
coming to some tentative conclusions.

34. Headlines, Hashtags or Titles
Invent a headline/hashtag/title for this item that
captures an important aspect of it.
Could use text, a photograph, a work of art, an
object

35. Headline or
Title
IMAGE: SSPL/GETTY IMAGES

36. Hashtag
Artifact from Alabama Archives:

37. http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/ref/collection/peppler/id/
6267
Headline, Title, Hashtag from Different Perspectives
KKK Parade, Dec. 10, 1967

38. Elaboration (Divide and Describe)
Purpose: This routine encourages students to look carefully at details.
• It challenges them to develop verbal descriptions that are elaborate, nuanced,
and imaginative.
• It also encourages them to distinguish between observations and
interpretations by asking them to withhold their ideas about the artwork –
their interpretations – until the end of the routine.
• This in turn strengthens students’ ability to reason carefully because it gives
them practice making sustained observations before jumping into judgment.

39. Divide and Describe Strategy-Two Methods
Method 1:
• One person identifies a specific
section of an image and describes
what he or she sees.
• Another person elaborates on the
first person’s observations by
adding more detail about the
section.
• A third person elaborates further
by adding yet more detail, and a
fourth person adds yet more.
Method 2
• As a group or class, ½ or ¼ of an
image is shown and students
describe what they see and
hypothesize what they are seeing.
• Gradually, each remaining ½ or ¼
of the image is revealed and
students continue to describe and
hypothesize.

45. Other ideas
• You can give every student a sticky note and ask them to view the entire
picture and write a word which is descriptive, ask a question.
• You can ask students to view the entire picture, go from student to student
and have them make observations.

46. Tug of War
Purpose: What kind of thinking does this routine encourage?
• This is routine builds on children's familiarity with the game of tug of war to
help them understand the complex forces that "tug" at either side of a
fairness dilemma.
• It encourages students to reason carefully about the "pull" of various factors
that are relevant to a dilemma of fairness.
• It also helps them appreciate the deeper complexity of fairness situations that
can appear black and white on the surface.

47. Tug of War
• Present a fairness dilemma.
• Identify the factors that "pull" at each side of the dilemma. These
are the two sides of the tug of war.
• Ask students to think of "tugs", or reasons why they support a
certain side of the dilemma. Ask them to try to think of reasons
on the other side of the dilemma as well.
• Generate "what if?" questions to explore the topic further.

48. As a better off nation, the US has a moral
obligation to help the least well off nations.
Yes
• Many less fortunate nations are
unstable politically and US help could
help stabilize governments which
provide services for their people
• We live in an interconnected world
and should be concerned about what
happens to people in other nations
• Poverty is not a self made struggle
No
• People in the US pay taxes and that
money should stay in the US to
benefit them
• We have many poor people in the US
• US has a huge debt and should not
take on any more
• US citizens contribute more to charity
than any other people in the world

49. Example of tug
on white board

50. RESOURCES
• Alabama Department of Archives and History http://archives.alabama.gov/
• Children and Youth in History http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/
• Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov
• National Archives and Records Administration http://www.nara.gov
• Project Zero http://www.pz.harvard.edu/