See/Think/Wonder – Mr. C.
While at Project Zero I was inspired by Lisa Verkerk, a 5th grade teacher from the International School of Amsterdam. (Lisa’s classroom and teaching play a prominent role in Ritchhart’s Making Thinking Visible.) I attended Lisa’s class “Developing the Disposition to Be Reflective.” Truthfully, the class wasn’t what I had expected when I enrolled. Nevertheless, Lisa modeled how she uses two specific thinking routines–See/Think/Wonder and Sentence/Phrase/Word (see Making Thinking Visible, 2011, pp. 207-213). Then, she talked about how she uses reflective art journals with her students to document their thinking. Instead of writing, students draw, paint, or color their reflections. Sometimes she asks them to explain their art in writing or simply to talk about their art and thinking. The artwork and testimonials were powerful stuff.
Lisa shared that she likes to show how much she values thinking by having her students do a See/Think/Wonder on the first day of school. I loved her idea. The former me always started school the “Wong Way” distributing my prepared syllabus and speaking to rules and procedures. Lisa’s idea resonated with me because it prioritized what I value (or want to value) most–THINKING! So, I stole Lisa’s idea, and guess what we did on the first day in sixth grade reading. That’s right! The students used the See/Think/Wonder routine to think about 6th grade, my classroom, reading class, and me.
- I see a woman wearing a wedding dress.
- I see a picture of Mr. Cummings wearing St. Louis Cardinals clothing and standing with four kids outside a baseball stadium.
- I see desks pushed together in groups.
- I see two comfy couches sitting on some rugs next to the book shelves.
- I see a stuffed Phineas, Ferb, and Perry the Platypus.
- I see “the language of thinking” words posted around the room.
After ten minutes of exploring, students returned to their seats. I instructed them to write “I think” statements based on the evidence they had collected while they were “seeing.”
- I think Mr. Cummings is married to the redhead in the picture.
- I think Mr. Cummings is a Cardinals fan and has four kids.
- I think we will work in reading groups this year.
- I think the couches, rug, and bookshelves are designed to be a reading center.
- I think Mr. Cummings likes Phineas and Ferb.
- I think Mr. Cummings wants us to use our brains.
- I wonder how long Mr. Cummings has been married.
- I wonder if Mr. Cummings took his family to a Cardinals game this summer.
- I wonder what kinds of small group activities we will do this year.
- I wonder how much time we’ll have to sit on the couches and read.
- I wonder why Mr. Cummings is so fond of Phineas and Ferb.
- I wonder if Mr Cummings entire room is designed to be a metaphor. (No lie. A student actually wrote that!)
Love it, Phillip! This is the strategy that I use when working with primary sources, but I hadn’t thought of it for an introduction activity.
Have a good day,
Hadley
Thanks, Hadley. Have you used “Sentence/Phrase/Word?” (Similar to, but not exactly like, the protocol in this PDF: http://bit.ly/sydxIE) It’s great for summarizing and distilling information. It might be a great way to have students investigate a primary source. I have only observed Lisa using it, but I think it would work well.
I love love love that you moved away from the traditional first day boredom of lecture and rules. Your activity gives students a genuine opportunity to think and to ask questions. I love See/Think/Wonder and I am definitely going to be looking for a way to incorporate it into a lesson soon! I bet it would make a great pre-reading activity.
You could certainly use it to help students access schema prior to reading a more challenging text. Just a thought-
Have just discovered this post, Philip. Have used the routine many times but never in this way! I love the way you used the routine to get the kids to think about their teacher and class, but especially to set the tone from day 1 that this is a place where thinking is valued.
How about adapting the routine for your reading classes into Read/Think/Wonder? ‘Read’ would be actual literal content. ‘Think’ might be what they infer as well as their responses. ‘Wonder’ will be their questions and predictions. perhaps. Would that work?
I’m still not quite sure what a ‘reading teacher’ does. Isn’t reading part of everything? Can you explain your role to help me understand?
Great idea. I think that goes well with teaching reading metacognition, which is the foundation of my class, but I haven’t couched it in those terms. Perhaps, I should. You’ve just added a new layer to my look at the routines.
I’m going to pull my standards (I cannot put my hands on them right this minute) and write a post explaining more specifically my role. For now, I’ll summarize by saying that our school is passionate about developing thoughtful readers and writers. One way we attempt to accomplish this is by having a class dedicated to English (language arts) and a class focused on reading (literature/reading metacognition/fluency). Some of my class time is core group (17-18 students at once), and some class time is small group (8-9 students at once). I am not a “specialist” focusing on remediation. Every student has reading class every day. I’ll try to be more specific in my upcoming post about what this looks like, but I’m also new (and tweaking it as I go).