Cognition, Thinking & Understanding

For Teachers and Leaders - Handouts to guide a COT Classroom

A series of forms, evaluations and guidelines for teachers and leaders to use in their Culture of Thinking classrooms and schools.

Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools

Inspired by the innovative educational philosophy that originated in Reggio Emilia, a small city in Italy, Visible Learners offers research-based practices for fostering learning in groups through documentation. In this approach, first developed during a long-term collaboration between researchers at Harvard's Project Zero and Reggio educators, learning becomes a visible activity that develops students' intellectual capacities as well as their individual and group identities as learners. Visible classrooms can be identified by five key principles—that learning is purposeful, social, representational, empowering, and emotional. The authors define each principle using illustrative learning portraits, quotes from students and teachers, pictures, reflections, and examples of student work. Additionally, the authors offer teachers and administrators practical ways to enhance learning by increasing collaboration and critical thinking across grade levels and subject matter. Also included is a section containing dozens of tools for making learners and learning visible, incorporating guidelines for the classroom and the staffroom as well as ideas for engaging students' families. Visible Learners shows how observing and documenting learning can change the nature of that learning, and asks teachers to look beyond surface to understand who their students are, what they come to know, and how they come to know it.  ISBN: 978-1118345696

Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom (Ch. 11)

Tools included in this section of Visible Learners: 

- Getting started with Making Learning Visible

- Looking at Learning in Groups: Classroom Discussion Guidelines

- Considerations for FOrming Small Groups

- Entry-Point Charts: Engaging All Members of the Group

- Structures for Giving and Receiving Feedback 

Supporting Learning in Groups in the Staffroom (Ch. 12)

Tools included in this section of Visible Learners:

- "Throwing Your Money Away": Exploring Group Learning and Documentation

- Designing and Facilitating Adult Study Groups

- Looking at Documentation: The Collaborative Assessment Conference

- Creading Documentation or Public Viewing Protocols

Documenting Individual and Group Learning (Ch. 13)

Tools included in this section of Visible Learners:  

- Documentation: When Does it Make Learning Visible? 

- Beginning to Document through Intentional Inquiry

- Beginning to Document by Stepping Back

- Considerations for Selecing a Documentation Tool

- Guidelines for Shooting Video and Photographs

- Making Learners' Words Visible: Speech Bubbles