Reading Reflection: After reading the required material for this module, type a reflection ?that include the following: Analyze HOM used: Start your reflection addressing a habit(s) of

1

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

CHAPTER 5

THINKING ROUTINES: CREATING THE SPACES AND STRUCTURES FOR THINKING

2

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

As a student teacher struggling to master the mysteries of life inside a classroom, I would spend hours pouring over books and resources to devise what I hoped would be interesting and engaging lessons for the second graders in my charge. Although this planning was important, and certainly necessary to my overall professional development, it prepared me less for assuming responsibility for a classroom than I imagined. No, my best preparation for stepping into the role of teacher didn’t come from devising interesting lessons or designing bulletin boards, but from the time I spent watching and learning the routines of the classroom of which I was about to take charge.

There was a certain way we did things in Mrs. Barker’s second grade, and I, probably more than any of the students, didn’t want to violate those rules of operation. I paid careful attention to how students were expected to line up, the way the day began, how and when students were allowed to talk, what movement was and was not allowed, how papers were passed out, which responsibilities were considered perks and which were deemed punishments, how materials were to be used and stored, and how we moved from one activity to another. All this watchfulness took place in anticipation of the day that I would take over the class and be the one responsible for both initiating and reinforcing those routines. Looking back, I can see that the lessons I taught in Mrs. Baker’s room frequently missed the mark—either because they were too ambitious and sprawling or because they were not directed to reach students where they were in their learning. However, because I had mastered the routines of the classroom, I generally was able to sustain a learning environment that allowed me to rebound from my mistakes and to make the necessary mid-course corrections needed to move forward.

Routines clearly play an important role in ordering and structuring the lives of the group of individuals coexisting in a small space known as a classroom. Anyone who has spent time in classrooms can attest to this. However, for teachers concerned with developing intellectual character, the importance of routines extends beyond a managerial function. Through specifying the guidelines by which learning interactions take place, routines act as a major enculturating force communicating the values of a classroom. Routines not only give a classroom a sense of order and smoothness, but also contribute to its unique feel as an environment for learning. In this chapter, we look more closely at how routines act to orchestrate the intellectual space of the classroom and support the development of students’ intellectual character. We first examine the general nature of routines and their various types before focusing on one particularly powerful type of

3

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

routine, thinking routines, that teachers use to scaffold students’ dispositional development.

THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF ROUTINES

What makes something a routine? How is a classroom routine different from other types of routines we are likely to run across in our lives—such as routines for brushing our teeth, grocery shopping, or planning a vacation? These everyday routines might be better thought of as rituals or habits since they tend to emerge slowly over time from our well-developed patterns of behavior. As rituals or habits, these practices tend not to be adopted explicitly nor are they necessarily tailored to meet their ends in the most efficient manner. In fact, “our way of doing things” often speaks more of preference and familiarity than of efficiency. In contrast, classroom routines tend to be explicit and goal-driven in nature. Their adoption usually represents a deliberate choice on the part of the teacher. Rather than emerging over time, classroom routines are more likely to be designed and taught overtly. Routines are crafted to achieve specific ends in, what is generally expected to be, an efficient and workable manner. Whereas rituals and habits can be carried out without our full awareness, classroom routines tend to be well known by all participants. To test this proposition, walk into any classroom and ask the students, as well as teacher, to tell you about the routines they use for passing out papers, lining up, speaking in class, etc.

The explicit and goal-driven nature of classroom routines leads us to a variety of additional features of routines. For instance, to keep them useful and efficient, routines tend to have only a few steps. Since everyone needs to quickly go about the tasks of lining up for lunch, passing out books, getting themselves into cooperative groups, or beginning a class, lengthy or complicated procedures are counterproductive. By having only a few steps, routines are easy to learn and teach. They can almost always be introduced and reinforced in context without need for extensive elaboration or pedagogy. When students fail to carry out routines fully or successfully, they can also be quite easily scaffolded by simply reminding or prompting the students to carry out the next step. Finally, to achieve their ends in efficiently directing a common behavior or task, routines have to be used over and over again so that they become ingrained and can be activated quickly in an almost automatic way. All these features of routines help us not only identify routines at work in the classroom, but also better understand how particular routines operate in context. We explore how each of these features apply to thinking routines in more depth a

4

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

bit later, but first we need to make a distinction between thinking routines and the other types of routines at work in a classroom.

Classroom routines can be grouped into four broad categories: housekeeping, management, discourse, and learning (Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986; Leinhardt, Weidman, & Hammond, 1987).i Housekeeping routines manage movement and physical materials within the classroom. For example, students might be required to raise their hands and ask permission before using the pencil sharpener, to put their book bags in a certain location, or to line up in a particular fashion. In short, housekeeping routines represent rules and guidelines for living and working together as a group. Management routines help students prepare for learning. They include such things as getting papers passed out, forming groups, coming to attention, and preparing for a discussion. For instance, at the beginning of a lesson, the teacher might assign one student from each table to go to the shelf and collect books for everyone at the table and then appoint another student to return them. Primary teachers often using a clapping pattern to call students back to attention. This is a management routine in that its effect is to prepare students for the next episode of learning but is not a strong learning moment in and of itself.

Discourse routines orchestrate conversations between teachers and students. Examples include the norms for a class discussion, raising one’s hand before speaking, procedures for listening and responding to the contributions of others, and guidelines a teacher might establish for the “author’s chair” time in writers’ workshop. Currently, many teachers have begun to use conversation protocols in their professional conversations with colleagues as a way to help them look at and understand student work.ii These protocols are a specific type of routine. Finally, learning routines focus students’ attention on the specific topic being studied. They could take the form of reading the lesson in the textbook, answering the questions that follow the reading, and checking in with the teacher if there are any problems. Other examples include the use of journals or note-taking procedures, a classroom debate about the interpretation of a passage, or procedures for reviewing and discussing homework.

In all cases, the routines described above are instrumental in nature. They are designed to achieve specific goals in an efficient and productive manner. Since teachers need to get students attention repeatedly throughout the day, it is useful to establish a routine for doing so. Likewise, because classes regularly engage in discussion, go over homework, line up, and gather information from texts, these tasks

5

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

can be routinized. As seen in the examples above, routines tend to have only a few steps, are easy to learn and teach, can be easily scaffolded, and are used over and over again.

THINKING ROUTINES: A SPECIAL TYPE OF ROUTINEiii

Although thinking routines have many similarities to other classroom routines, they differ qualitatively from these other types of routines in an important way. Whereas most routines direct overt behavior, thinking routines direct and guide mental action. We might view thinking routines as a particular subset of discourse or learning routines since learning or the discussion of ideas is the larger goal. But, you might ask, don’t all learning or discourse routines involve thinking? Unfortunately, the answer is no. It is quite natural for a learning routine to involve thinking, but it doesn’t have to do so. There can be nonthinking or thinking-minimal learning routines that seek to direct students’ actions toward learning or discourse but do little to activate and support students’ mental efforts.

What does it mean to have a routine designed to support learning but not necessarily support thinking? Here’s an example: a teacher establishes the routine of reading each new book chapter in a round- robin fashion. This routine’s purpose is to help students to learn and is, thus, classified as a learning routine—regardless of its effectiveness. However, it is not a thinking routine because the practice, while it might involve thinking for some students, does not serve to encourage or actively support students’ thinking. It is up to the students themselves to activate their own thinking in this situation. Doing so will certainly have benefits, and the teacher might even expect that such activation will take place. However, the routine itself does little to support or encourage mental engagement.

Now, let’s look at the flip side of this situation. What would a thinking-rich learning routine look like? Before beginning a new science unit, a teacher might have her students collectively brainstorm all of the things they know about the topic and how they think it connects to other areas of science they have studied. This brainstorm might take the form of a class web or a list. This is the way the teacher regularly begins new units, and the class knows the process and can easily participate in the practice without much additional guidance. Such a practice would be classified as both a learning and a thinking routine. The larger purpose of the routine is still learning, but now the routine is targeted to actively encourage, involve, and support students’ thinking. Specifically, the brainstorming and webbing routines

6

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

facilitate students’ connection making, generation of new ideas and possibilities, and activation of prior knowledge. The odds are that any student involved in the routine will be involved in these types of thinking as well.

Thinking routines generally adhere to the same criteria and have the same features as the other routines already discussed. These criteria were described above in relation to housekeeping, management, discourse, and learning routines, but what do they look like when applied to thinking routines? How can these criteria help us understand and uncover examples of thinking routines as we look at our own practice and that of others?

We initially distinguished routines from habits or “ways of doing things” by talking about their explicit and instrumental nature. That is, routines are known by the group of learners and are designed to serve a specific purpose. The explicit nature of thinking routines is evidenced by their having names or labels—such as brainstorming, webbing, pro and con lists, KWL—that allow us to easily recall them and put them in play. At the broadest level, thinking routines are purposeful because their overriding goal is to encourage, involve, and support thinking. But they serve more specific purposes as well. For example, we’ve discussed how brainstorming is useful in the generation of ideas and possibilities and how webbing is used to connect ideas and identify relationships. In activating a thinking routine, whether in the classroom or in one’s own day-to-day functioning, the routine’s specific purpose must be suited to the task. If we want to open up our thinking we might engage in brainstorming. If we want to choose between options we might develop a pro and con list. Thus, while still purposeful, thinking routines are more instrumental in nature than are other routines. That is, thinking routines act as a means for achieving broader goals rather than as goals themselves. We can see this if we contrast the webbing routine with a lining-up-for-lunch routine. Lining up for lunch is its own goal and performing the routine achieves that goal. In contrast, webbing is not a goal in and of itself, at least it shouldn’t be thought of as such, it is a tool for connecting and organizing one’s thoughts and ideas.

As we’ve seen, routines structure actions into a series of steps. For ease of use and retention, the number of steps is generally kept relatively short. This economy helps increase the routine’s effectiveness and encourage its use. Many routines are even named and recalled by acronyms that refer to their steps, making them even easier to activate: KWL, for example, stands for —What do you know? What do you

7

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

want to know? What did you learn—. CSQ—claim, support, question—is another routine designed to help students consider evidence and reasons. This routine asks students to clearly identify a truth claim that they have heard or come across in some way, consider what specific evidence they have that supports the claim, and then consider what evidence or reasons they have to question the claim.

The fact that these routines have only a few steps makes them easy to teach, learn, and remember—an important quality of all routines, but of particular importance to thinking routines. Complicated routines or cumbersome processes aren’t of much use in the moment. Such procedures simply tend not to get used. To be most effective, thinking supports need to be streamlined so that they can easily be called to mind right as they are needed. David Perkins (1999) has dubbed this ease-of-access quality “action poetry,” indicating that there is a certain brevity and elegance that helps the routine stick in our mind and simplifies its recall when we want to put it into action. A problem- solving routine developed by my colleagues Shari Tishman demonstrates the point. The routine involves three steps: Say what, . Say why. Say other things to try. The routine is simple and straight forward, doesn’t need a lot of elaboration when teaching, and has a certain catchiness to its wording that makes it easy to recall.

However, even if a thinking routine cannot be called up or used effectively all the time, it can be easily scaffolded or prompted into action by a teacher or coach. A good example of this is a routine used in the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Visual Thinking Curriculum (VTC) (Tishman, MacGillvray, & Palmer, 1999). These materials help develop students’ thinking through looking at art. One strategy used to accomplish this goal is to employ a thinking routine that is also a discourse routine. The routine involves engaging students in a discussion centered around two simple questions: What do you think is going on in this painting? What makes you say that? Students first offer an interpretation, then back up that interpretation with evidence. The questions constitute a routine in that they are a core practice of the instructional module that is used over and over. In practice, students learn the routine quickly and begin to talk about art by spontaneously answering the questions. However, if a student offers an interpretation without evidence, the teacher or a fellow student can easily scaffold the routine by simply asking the student, “What makes you say that?” As with most routines, the routine’s next step is a natural outgrowth of the previous step(s) and acts as a natural prompt. There is no need to re- teach the routine or even call attention to a dropped step. A more experienced member of the group merely cues the next step.

8

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

While it seems axiomatic to say that routines are used over and over again in the classroom, it is worth focusing on this quality with regard to thinking routines so as to clearly distinguish them from other efforts and strategies for promoting thinking. Teachers engage in all kinds of practices to try and get students thinking. They may ask pointed questions about a particular assignment or reading. They may propose activities that require thinking, such as comparing and contrasting two objects, writing an persuasive essay, creating an application for a new idea, etc. While such tasks certain encourage thinking, they wouldn’t be classified as routines because they aren’t core practices that are repeated over and over again. Thus, these practices don’t have a chance to become routinized for the individual or the class as a whole. When we are creating or seeking to identify thinking routines, we want to focus our attention on those practices that emerge repeatedly over time in the environment.

As we’ve seen, thinking routines are similar to other types of routines in that they have only a few steps, are easily learned and remembered, can be easily scaffolded, and get used repeatedly. Thinking routines have two additional characteristics that set them apart from other types or routines, however. First, thinking routines are useful across a variety of contexts. Second, thinking routines exist as both public and private practices.

Routines for passing out papers or straightening up the classroom at the end of the day are clearly one-shot, situation-specific routines. Such routines have a distinct goal and context that makes them of limited use in other situations. In contrast, much of the power of thinking routines is that they have wide applicability because of their instrumental nature. All of the thinking routines we have looked at—KWL, brainstorming, webbing, CSQ, etc.—can be useful across a variety of grade levels, subject areas, and contexts. Even some of the routines designed for specific programs, such as the VTC questions, have this quality. Although these questions—What do you think is going on in this painting? What makes you say that?— are designed for looking at art, the words “in this painting” can simple be removed and the word “here” substituted to make the routine fit easily into a science, history, reading, or math context.

Finally, thinking routines operate as public and private practices. Many of the routines we’ve discussed are for use only in the classroom.. Thus, they get left behind once we leave the classroom—we seldom see people raising their hands to speak at a dinner party! But, this is not true of thinking routines. Because of their broad applicability, thinking

9

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

routines often are useful outside of the classroom. In addition, because thinking routines seek to activate individual as well as group thinking, these routines can be used privately by individuals to help them help themselves achieve better thinking. For instance, when we find ourselves in a rut, we can brainstorm new ideas on our own. Before tackling a difficult problem, we can say what, say why, and say other things to try. In trying to make a decision, we can make a list of pros and cons. Although there are times when we might prefer to engage in the routine within a group, the thinking routine still can be of use to us in our private dealings.

THINKING ROUTINES IN ACTION

Having examined key characteristics of thinking routines, we want to return to the classroom to look at thinking routines in action to better understand how they get introduced, used, and enculturated into the life of a classroom. The classroom context gives us a chance to see that, while well-known thinking routines like the ones we have discussed can be useful, teachers often create their own thinking routines that often prove as powerful for them and their students than those adopted from outside sources.

In the classrooms I studied, thinking-rich routines tended to represent the major type of direct instruction in thinking that the teachers used. This was the way they attended to the development of students’ ability in thinking. Therefore, it was not uncommon for new routines to be introduced throughout the year to serve specific purposes. However, a large number of the thinking routines at work in these classrooms were introduced quite early in the school year. Doing so helped to clarify the teacher’s expectations for students and to send clear messages about what learning in a particular classroom was going to be like. Consequently, one way of grouping thinking routines is as the answers to certain key questions about learning that students bring with them to any new classroom: 1) How are ideas discussed and explored within this class? 2) How are ideas, thinking, and learning managed and documented here? 3) How do we find out new things and come to know in this class?

To one extent or another, all teachers provide students with answers to these questions. The answers may be fuzzy, unclear, and always changing in some circumstances, in which case students will respond with confusion and uncertainty. Or the answers may be sharp and accessible, providing students with a clear sense of how to be a productive member of the classroom. In the following examples, notice

10

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

how the routines not only provide sharp answers to the questions, but also give students useful tools, structures, and guidelines that they can use to be successful in a new classroom.

Routines for Discussing and Exploring Ideas

For classrooms to become intellectual environments in which students’ develop their ability to think, they must also be places where ideas are regularly discussed and explored. Thinking is not content neutral. We need something about which to think. Something that will engage us mentally and motivationally enough to warrant the hard working of thinking. However, if students are to think well about these ideas, that is, to use their ability to reason, to connect, and to expand on ideas, they will need support in doing so. Furthermore, if this kind of intellectual activity is to take place as part of a collaborative group working together to build understanding and explore the meaning of new ideas, then processes and routines for such collaborative work must be established. How do teachers teach students to discuss and explore ideas in a way that engages them actively and brings out their best thinking? Below, we look at two such routines. The first is from Susan McCray’s humanities class. The second from john Threlkeld’s Algebra I course. While each of these routines is embedded into the fabric of the classroom, we will look at their introduction to see how students are first exposed to each of the routines.

The Why? Routine.

In the middle of Susan McCray’s blackboard is a sentence—well, kind of a sentence:

susan sighed cause I was so nurvous I couldnt slept last knight

Off to the side of the would-be sentence, written at a slant, are the words “Daily Edit.” As the combined class of seventh and eighth graders enter Susan’s room, they are told to open up their composition books and get to work fixing up the sentence. This is a routine for beginning the class that Susan established the first week of school. It ensures that students know exactly what to do when they come to class, and promotes a smooth opening. As such, this is a learning routine that also serves as a management routine. While the class works on the

11

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

sentence, Susan checks in with students individually and passes back homework. After a few minutes, Susan positions herself at the blackboard, and discussion of the sentence begins. Notice that throughout the discussion, Susan is working to embed another routine, a thinking routine focused on the discussion of ideas.

“Alright,” Susan begins. “Can I have everybody’s attention, please. Is everybody done with the daily edit? Rachel, give us the first one.”

With complete confidence, Rachel offers, “Capitalize Susan.”

“Why is that?” Susan asks as she makes the correction on the blackboard.

“Because it is the beginning of someone’s name.”

“Very good,” Susan responds as she quickly moves on, looking around the room for raised hands. “Next. Matthew.”

“A comma after sighed.”

“Why is that?”

Matthew responds, “Because she’s talking, and she’s taking a breath.”

“Okay,” Susan nods, and then clarifies, “She is taking a breath or pausing. You do pause after a sigh.” Susan lets out an exaggerated sigh to make the point and then adds, “You also said she was talking. We’re beginning a quotation. Before introducing a quotation you always need some kind of punctuation, like a comma.”

Before Susan can ask for the next edit, a bilingual student still struggling with English offers a change to be made, “You need to change ‘cause.’”

“Okay, what’s wrong with it?” Susan asks him.

“It’s kind of slang and not right,” he answers.

“What should it be then?”

“Because.”

“How do you want me to write it?” Susan pushes, watching to see if he will also catch that the word needs a capital letter.

“ b-e-c-a-u-s-e,” the young man offers.

12

Chapter 5 Draft Proof for Intellectual Character by Ron Ritchhart. © 2002

Susan records his response on the board and then adds, “There’s something that needs to come before though. What is it?”

The student quickly responds, “ The quotation mark.” And, without prompting he adds, “Because it’s the beginning of what she is saying.”

The offending lowercase “b” is next taken care of, and then questions erupt about possibly changing the sentence. “Couldn’t you leave out the word because altogether? “ a student asks. “Couldn’t you change the I’s to she so that you don’t have to have quotations at all?” offers another.

As each of these issues is discussed, Susan asks, “Why? Why would that make a difference? Why do you do that? Yes, you can pause there, but why else might that need a comma?” Through her ubiquitous questioning about the reasons why one makes the editing choices one does, Susan conveys to her students that she is interested in more than answers; she is interested in the justification of those answers. At one point in the lesson, Susan explicitly addresses one student’s frustration at having to provide a justification for a correct edit by telling him, “Yes, it’s right. But, we are also trying to learn the reasons.”

At this point in the year, Susan’s active questioning teaches students a simple routine about providing answers and explanation. She conveys to them how they need to talk about this particular task as well as her expectations for them. Over the next couple of weeks, there is a subtle shift in Susan’s handling of the daily edit. When she asks students for their edits, she begins to take a very slight

Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers

Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.

Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS

Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?

Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.

We write plagiarism Free Content

Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.

Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.