Venue: American Community School of Abu Dhabi, UAE
Full Bio
MARK CHURCH works with educators throughout the world striving to create cultures of thinking in their classrooms and schools. He challenges teachers to foster thinking dispositions in students in service of deep understanding, invites teachers to develop and use a language of thinking that communicates value for student sense-making, and encourages teachers to make their classroom environment rich with the documents of thinking processes.
Mr Church is currently a consultant with Harvard Project Zero’s Making Thinking Visible and Cultures of Thinking initiatives worldwide, drawing upon his own classroom teaching experience and from the perspectives he has gained working with educators throughout North America, Australia, Asia, and Europe.
Mr Church enjoys helping teachers examine opportunities for student thoughtfulness, use thinking routines as supports and scaffolds, interact with students in ways that demonstrate interest in and respect for students’ thinking, and send clear expectations about the importance and value of thinking in learning.
Together with Ron Ritchhart and Karin Morrison, he is co-author of Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners (Jossey-Bass, 2011). visiblethinkingpz.org
Institute Description
Making Thinking Visible: Creating & Sustaining a Culture of Thinking in Our Classrooms
Every classroom and school communicate to students a story of what learning actually is -- what it feels like, what it looks like, and how it serves the development of understanding. While teachers have dreams for who we wish our students to be long into adulthood, creating a culture of thinking in our classrooms with skill and savviness can easily get buried in the day-to-day business of school.
The Harvard Project Zero Cultures of Thinking team is keenly interested in exploring this space with educators: Just what would it mean for our classrooms and schools to take on an intentional stance to cultivate and grow thinking habits in our students that they can take with them long after they’ve left us?
A key practice in our work involves the use of thinking routines. As tools and structures, thinking routines are useful across several contexts, are easy to learn and remember, and can provide access into significant content through meaningful interactions. But ultimately, the use of thinking routines is most powerful when they become patterns of thinking behaviors that students bring to their learning regularly, thoughtfully, and on-demand.
In this two-day institute, we’ll first broadly examine what it means to create a culture of thinking – the bigger purpose. Then we’ll dive deeply into several experiences using thinking routines, considering their practical use across a wide-range of content area and grade levels.
Furthermore, we’ll consider just how making thinking routines part of a classroom’s regular fare can have significant influence on the interactions students have with the curriculum and one another, the depth of thinking language it promotes, and the richness of thinking opportunities that help students deepen and develop rich understanding.
OUTCOMES: Participants will. . .
- See their role as culture shapers within the learning contexts they lead, noticing where they make choices to promote (or hinder) rich thinking among their students.
- Learn a variety of thinking routines -- tools and structures useful for growing patterns of rich thinking disposition
- Examine their role in creating rich interactions around thinking opportunities and looking closely at the language and modeling they bring to their classrooms that foster powerful learning.
Target Audience
Advance Prep/Prereqs
No prior experience is necessary, but a look at visiblethinkingpz.org can be a good starting place for participants to get a sense of the kinds of ideas we'll be exploring -- especially regarding the role of thinking in the development of understanding.
Handouts
Save paper and effort where possible!
For your convenience, and to support our efforts in being "green", all handouts/files posted here have been notated with an A, B, C or D indicating the following:
(A) hardcopies needed at workshop
(B) electronic version on laptop is sufficient (for viewing during the workshop)
(C) required reading PRIOR to the workshop
(D) file not needed for workshop itself, but simply material of additional interest/reference
(B) The 8 Cultural Forces That Define Our Classrooms
(B) Headlines Routine - A routine for capturing essence
(B) The 4 C's - A routine for structuring a text-based discussion
(B) 3-2-1 Bridge - A routine for activating prior knowledge and making connections
(B) Connect/Extend/Challenge - A routine for connecting new ideas to prior knowledge
(B) Claim/Support/Question - A reasoning routine
(B) CSI: Colour, Symbol, Image Routine - A routine for distilling the essence of ideas non-verbally
(B) See/Think/Wonder: A routine for exploring works of art and other interesting things
(B) Step Inside: Perceive, Know About, Care About: A routine for getting inside viewpoints
(B) Think/Puzzle/Explore - A routine that sets the stage for deeper inquiry
(B) I Used to Think..., But Now I Think... - A routine on reflecting on how and why our thinking has changed
(B) What Makes You Say That? - Interpretation with justification routine
(D) Making Thinking Visible: S.O.S. (A Summary of the Summary)