Everyone loves a printable! Check out these two ready-to-go resources for active processing.
1. Choose Your Own Adventure Graphic Organizer
Need a way to help kids process the relationship between ideas or concepts in your class? Try asking students to choose which graphic organizer best fits those ideas. Are you discussing two ideas that are oppositional (see arrows pointing at each other) or are you talking a process (see wheel diagram)? Ask students to choose which graphic organizer would make the most sense and explain their reasoning. Then have students map the ideas from class on to that organizer. Keep in mind the ultimate goal is to help students develop these frameworks for understanding ideas so they can start applying them even when it’s not the activity you assign. They’re easy to make so add your own and laminate so you can re-use!
You’ve probably heard us sing the praises of Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison’s great book Making Thinking Visible and the related Project Zero at Harvard’s GSE. If you’d like to try out some of the strategies that derive from this great work, you can start with this resource that summarizes each thinking routines in a few simple steps. Print them all (or convert to googledoc) and write in your notes about how you adapted them and what worked well.
That’s it for this Thursday. Happy Thinking 🙂