Chapter 14 page 312
Students Making Thinking Visible
When students practice strategy use, it is important that they make their thinking visible (John D.
Bransford et al., 1999; J. S. Brown et al., 1989; Duschl & Osborne, 2002; Linn, Davis, & Bell, 2004a;
Ritchhart & Perkins, 2008). As we have discussed in previous chapters, making thinking visible refers to
students speaking aloud or writing their thought processes. While using cognitive strategies, students make
their thinking visible when they write or say the thought processes they are using. Teachers make their
thinking visible when they provide good models of strategy use. Students should also make their thinking
visible when they use strategies. This enables the teacher to evaluate how well they are using strategies and
to give them any needed feedback. Students can also learn about how to use strategies from each other as
they reflect on each others’ visible thinking during strategy use.
Here is an illustration of a high-school student making his thinking visible as he uses the strategy of
thinking about the audience when writing:
“I want to make sure that I am considering the audience as I write this commentary on school cell
phone policy. I’m hoping that my commentary will be printed in the school newspaper, so the audience
is going to be the whole school—the teachers, the administration, and the students. The main audience
is probably the administration, because I would actually like to encourage a change in the policy, but I
have to be careful not to write anything that is so inflammatory that the administration will censor it.
Since I want to challenge the school’s current policies, I am going to have to make it really fact-based,
using lots of evidence, or else the administration and teachers will just say that I’m a crazy student.....
The student does not just say that he is going to take the audience into consideration. He makes his thinking
clear about who the critical audience is, and how he will have to tailor his piece to be persuasive to his
critical audience. The teacher can see that the student is using the strategy well, and any classmates who
have not mastered the strategy of considering the audience have profited by hearing a good example of how
to implement this strategy.
When holding class discussions focused on strategies, teachers can encourage students by giving
directions such as “Be sure to explain your thinking to us” or “Don’t forget to make your thinking visible.”
They can also ask questions such as “How did you get that answer?” or “Why do think that?”
Here is a teacher who uses a question like this when working with fifth-grade students on the strategy of
making predictions about what will appear next in a text, a comprehension strategy that has been
recommended by some researchers (e.g., van den Bos, Nakken, Nicolay, & van Houten, 2007). The
students are reading a geography textbook chapter on Australia.
Transcript Analysis
Teacher: Damian, what do you think the text will talk
about next?
Damian: I’d say the next section would talk about,
like, the climate.
Teacher: How did you come up with that idea?
Damian: Well, it just talked about the mountains and
stuff. And that’s geography. And climate is
usually covered as part of geography, too,
and it hasn’t talked about climate yet. So I
think climate might be next.
Teacher: That’s good thinking. You’re thinking about
what country topics have already been
covered, and which haven’t been covered yet.
That prediction makes sense.
The teacher prompts Damian to provide a
prediction.
Damian gives a response, but without any
explanation of how he thought of this response.
The teacher prompts Damian to make his
thinking visible. Damian explains his thinking,
thus making his thinking visible.Several good outcomes ensue from the teacher asking Damian to explain his prediction. First, the
teacher can be sure that Damian really understands how to generate a good prediction and did not just make