Mark Church of Harvard Runs Faculty Workshops on Making Thinking Visible

“If classrooms are going to be rich cultures of thinking for our students, then schools must be rich cultures of thinking for educators.”

On Monday and Tuesday, 18 teachers participated in a series of workshops with Mark Church, our learning consultant from Harvard, and co-author of Making Thinking Visible. As part of our school's reflection on this year's theme, Deliberate Moral Introspection, the sessions focused on “How do we frame the story of thinking and learning at Saint David’s?"

Mark shared the Understanding Map, which was developed by Harvard Project Zero. The map identifies a number of high leverage thinking moves that people use to solve problems.

These thinking dispositions are representative of the types of thinking that lead to deeper understanding. For instance, when studying history, Considering Different Viewpoints and Reasoning with Evidence are certainly essential. In math, when solving an algebraic equation, Making Connections and Uncovering Complexity are key moves to consider. Teachers can use the Understanding Map as a planning tool to determine the “thinking agenda” for their units of study.

The 18 teachers in the seed group routinely meet throughout the school year to discuss teaching and learning, and examine ways they can make thinking more visible in their classrooms.

These professional learning teams stimulate and fuel our teachers’ practice, creating a rich culture of thinking for our teachers and boys.

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