Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities

Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study. Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon.

• Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion
• Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas
• Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies

The book also comes with a DVD of video clips featuring Visible Thinking in practice in different classrooms.

Ron Ritchhart, Ed.D. is a senior researcher at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author of Intellectual Character from Jossey-Bass.

Mark Church is the Learning, Assessment, and Instructional Resource Supervisor for the Traverse City Area Public Schools in Michigan.

Karin Morrison is director of The Development Centre at Independent Schools Victoria, Australia and instructor for the WIDE World online course, Making Thinking Visible, at Harvard.