KnowAtom's Blog

How Important is Routine and Structure in NGSS Storylines?

May 9, 2023 by Staff Writer

When we talk about storyline pedagogy, we describe the individual lessons, or ‘episodes’ that make up a storyline as unscripted opportunities for student-led discovery. But, without the frameworks and classroom routines in place to prepare students for this next-generation model of instruction, we’re not setting them up for success. In fact, without strong routines and structures in place in the classroom, the idea of ‘unscripted discovery’ may make teachers and their students uncomfortable. That energy, however, is what sparks scientific discovery. Students need the time, space, and structure to create, to interact with phenomena personally, and to make mistakes and learn from them – for deeper learning to occur. With frameworks and processes in place, students and their teachers have common tools to engage critical thinking, personal reflection, and hands-on investigation.

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Topics: Socratic dialogue, Thinking Routines, NGSS Storylines

Color, Symbol, Image: A Thinking Routine to Map Student Understanding

Dec 4, 2022 by Naamonde Williams

“Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world.” - Jerry Saltz

What is the Color, Symbol, Image Thinking Routine

A powerful way to keep students at the center of your instructional practice is to provide a diverse set of tools to enhance the expression of understanding. In the science classroom, students must organize ideas, make connections, draw conclusions, and reason with evidence. The Color, Symbol, Image routine asks students to engage in deeper cognitive work through abstract thinking to select a color, symbol, and image to represent the essence of concepts or ideas. Students use this routine as a framework to think abstractly and synthesize new ideas by connecting what they already know to new information and developing creative representations of their thinking.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

Tug of War: Thinking Moves to Explore the Complexity of Dilemmas

Nov 15, 2022 by Tosha Gros

“Most of all, have the confidence in every learner’s ability to think and your capacity to nurture that thinking. The results will amaze and energize you.” - Ron Ritchhart

Why are thinking routines useful in the classroom?

Visible thinking routines actively engage students in independent thinking, creativity, and imagination by engaging students’ thinking moves. Teachers utilize visible thinking routines to support students in building a habit of critical thinking and confidence in the classroom.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

Critical Thinking and the Connect, Extend, Challenge Thinking Routine

Nov 6, 2022 by Samantha O'neil

Science teachers use thinking routines to encourage students to think critically about big ideas. When students learn how to extend their reasoning using thinking moves, they are challenged to go below the surface and build a deeper understanding of scientific ideas and STEM principles. When classroom requirements go beyond memorizing facts and vocabulary, our students are free to wonder and to ask and answer their own questions. The Connect, Extend, Challenge thinking routine provides a sequence of steps that support critical thinking, student-centered learning, and personal discovery in the classroom.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

Explore Change and Possibility with the What Can Be Thinking Routine

Oct 23, 2022 by Amanda Flocchini

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
-Voltaire

What Are Thinking Routines?

Thinking routines allow you to give your students the tools they need to make their thinking visible. Instead of telling students what to think, we can introduce routines that students can use as tools to become skillful independent thinkers.

Thinking routines work best when they are just that - routines. Using thinking routines with your students will create habits for them to be successful lifelong learners.

The What Can Be thinking routine asks students to discuss unfolding complexities and to imagine the future opportunities created by the unfolding situation. By unpacking complexity, students can engage more deeply with a concept. This creates opportunities for skillful thinking both in and out of the classroom.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

Claim, Support, Question Thinking Routine and Reasoning With Evidence

Oct 16, 2022 by Tatum Moser

"The more you know, the more you realize you don't know." Aristotle

What is the Claim, Support, Question Thinking Routine?

The Claim, Support, Question thinking routine helps students develop key thinking moves like identifying generalizations, offering counterarguments, reasoning with evidence, and asking questions. Created by Ron Ritchhart and researchers at Project Zero, this thinking routine shows students the importance of identifying, understanding, and making claims based on reasoning and evidence. Strong claims, sound reasoning, and thoughtful follow-up questions ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of topics and concepts. The more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. This helps us to understand that we always need to ask new questions as our understanding evolves.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

Inspire Skillful Listening with The Explanation Game Thinking Routine

Oct 9, 2022 by Tatum Moser

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” - John Berger

What is the Explanation Game?

The Explanation Game thinking routine, developed by Ron Richtart and researchers at Project Zero, supports students in increasing their understanding of a concept by crafting multiple explanations based on evidence. The routine is designed to push students’ thinking as they explore complex topics and attempt to understand the whole by examining various parts and features.

Flexible in its application across subjects, you can use The Explanation Game to deconstruct almost anything, including objects, complex processes, systems, or documents. Engaging in this thinking routine will help students learn to work together toward understanding why something is the way it is. In addition to observing, crafting explanations based on evidence, and asking questions, students will also pay close attention to effective listening and how it can provide a path to deeper learning.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

See, Think, Wonder Thinking Routine for Creative Classroom Learning

Oct 2, 2022 by Tatum Moser

"To acquire knowledge, one must study. But to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” Marilyn vos Savant

What is the See, Think, Wonder Thinking Routine?

Ron Ritchhart and the researchers at Project Zero developed the See, Think, Wonder thinking routine to support students to zoom in and experience the purpose and benefits of careful observation in the learning process.

This thinking routine uses visual imagery, artifacts, and media to engage students to carefully notice the different parts and features of objects, ideas, phenomena, etc. See, Think, Wonder engages students by allowing for open exploration of a concept rather than the more common teacher-directed delivery of information and knowledge transfer. Creating a meaningful purpose for close observation and description of a new idea or concept is also the first step toward developing thoughtful explanations and interpretations and identifying areas of further inquiry.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

What Thinking Moves and Routines Can Help Students to be Successful Learners?

Sep 25, 2022 by Tatum Moser

 “The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.”        -Elbert Hubbard

Why do students need to develop thinking moves?

Enabling a child to become an independent and motivated learner is one of our most important responsibilities. 

While it won’t happen overnight, incorporating experiences where students explore different thinking moves to increase their understanding of a concept, claim, or situation, can pave the way to deeper learning and transform your science classroom. Skillful thinking increases student competency to perform deeper cognitive work, raising their level of engagement and making your teaching more joyful and effective.

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Topics: Thinking Routines

Learning Styles Are More About Teaching Styles: Teaching All Learners

Sep 21, 2021 by Judy Higgins

One thing I've learned over the past 20 years of teaching is that learning styles are really more about teaching styles. There are many different types of learning styles and it's important to make sure that we are teaching all learners and giving students the tools they need to succeed in the classroom. One example of how to accomplish this challenge in your own classroom is by improving access to the assigned reading for all students. To help, I am going to share the tools and strategies I use to engage all students in the nonfiction reading component of the KnowAtom science curriculum.

KnowAtom's next generation science standards (NGSS)-designed curriculum uses a similar routine for each lesson so that students begin to know what to expect. For each lesson within every unit, we start out reading. Students then take part in a Socratic dialogue using what they've learned from the reading. Next, we plan for a hands-on experiment, investigation, or engineering prototype. To wrap up the investigation, teams share their conclusions and debrief. As you can see, the nonfiction reading provides the launching point for each lesson.

No matter what level a student is reading at, whether they are an English language learner or whether they are predominantly a visual vs. an auditory learner, it's important that they can access the information in the reader upfront. To help students with different types of learning styles access the nonfiction text, teachers must understand how students learn differently. One popular model is the VARK learning styles theory. VARK identifies four different learning styles: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and reading/writing. While most students have a combination of these different types of learning styles, some students learn predominantly from only one.

Connecting new phenomena to past experience

When beginning a new lesson, teachers should consider what knowledge and experiences students bring with them to the class. By establishing a common background when introducing new phenomena, teachers help level the playing field for students who are at different places along their learning journey.

For example, if we're investigating friction and the impact that a dog sled might have moving over snow, that context would be really difficult for a student who hasn't experienced snow to think about. "I don't understand because I don't know what it's like to walk on snow. I don't know the properties of snow. I haven't experienced that," the student is thinking. With the KnowAtom curriculum, the text before every unit helps give every student a common background and some insight into the phenomena they're about to explore.

For students with reading/writing predominance in their VARK learning style, reading the text before the hands-on experiment helps them understand the new concept when it is introduced. But that's not the only type of learning style you have in your classroom. Visual learners are better supported by the visuals in the nonfiction reader, including photos, charts, and graphs with explanatory text. Auditory learners may learn best from classroom discussions about the reading and can be supported by tools like sentence starter frames and annotating the text, so they come to the class discussion with the right questions to ask. Finally, kinesthetic learners learn from doing – and the tactile experience of completing an engineering project related to the new concept will help them better understand the lesson.

Another way students with all different types of learning styles can relate to the nonfiction text in the KnowAtom student readers is by connecting the new information to current knowledge – what they've learned before. Students start to think about, "Oh, I remember learning a little bit about that last year," or "I experienced something like this when I was cooking at home and the water started to boil." When working in pairs, small groups, or as a class – teachers can help students connect new phenomena with current knowledge by asking questions about what they've learned from the text and what it reminds them of.

KnowAtom's introductory text helps students start to think about what they will be exploring in the hands-on activity. It introduces or reinforces the vocabulary needed for the Socratic discourse, so students feel more comfortable joining in the classroom discussion. When using KnowAtom's NGSS-designed curriculum, we challenge our students to act like scientists and engineers, interacting with their peers in a professional setting. This helps level the playing field even further because all students are accessing the same vocabulary when discussing the new phenomenon and understand the rules of engagement when taking part in the classroom discussion.


Tools to strengthen reading fundamentals for all types of learning styles

One of the first things I do to help improve access to the reading material for all students is using prereading tools. The majority of my students are English learners, so they are often not reading at grade level yet. One tool I use to help them access the text is focusing on pictures. Asking students to find meaning in the images in KnowAtom's student readers and using a picture thinking graphic organizer helps them identify the images' object, action, and property. Students build critical thinking and active reading skills as they wonder what they will be reading about through the images and connect it to their current knowledge. This can be done together as a class, or in small student groups, or individually.

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Topics: Next Generation Science Standards, higher order thinking, Socratic dialogue, Expert, Middle School Science Curriculum, Next Generation Science, Implementing New Science Standards, NGSS-Designed Curriculum, Phenomena-Based Learning, Remote Learning, Thinking Routines

The Best KWL Chart is Actually a Picture Thinking Routine

Sep 15, 2021 by Judy Higgins

What is a KWL chart, and how is it used in teaching science? Let's take a look first at what the 'KWL' stands for – it's an acronym for what students KNOW, WANT to know, and will LEARN during a lesson. KWL charts are graphic organizers that help students collect information before, during, and after a unit. Using a KWL graphic organizer supports the constructivist teaching model – the idea that deeper learning happens when students are actively involved in the learning process instead of passive recipients of new information.

When teachers use KWL charts to introduce new ideas and topics, they help students identify what they already know about the topic and better understand the objectives of the lesson. KWL charts can also be used by teachers to monitor student success. KWL charts help guide students through nonfiction texts, as they track their progress in three columns titled KNOW, WANT, and LEARNED. There are many different KWL chart format examples, and they can be used to teach a variety of topics and subject areas. I am going to share how I used a Picture-Thinking graphic organizer (one type of KWL chart) with the KnowAtom science curriculum to implement the Picture-Thinking reading strategy. This graphic organizer is even better than a KWL chart because students are working within a context to identify what they know, want to know, and what they've learned. I have been a teacher for about 20 years, and for the last five years of my teaching I have used the KnowAtom curriculum.


KWL Charts and Picture-Thinking Reading Comprehension

The picture-thinking routine is one of my favorite routines. I started using this in my classroom about two years ago, and it really made a huge difference in my students' engagement with nonfiction texts. When I made it part of my regular classroom routine, students started thinking in such different ways. I'm going to take you step-by-step through exactly how to implement this routine in your own classroom, using the Picture-Thinking graphic organizer to help.

What is a "picture thinker?" A picture thinker is someone who thinks more in pictures than in words or sounds. Incorporating the picture-thinking routine in your classroom will help not only those students who think "in pictures," it's a great way for all students to make strong connections between the context and new vocabulary words, concepts, and what they already know. Here's an example of a Picture-Thinking KWL graphic organizer I use in my classroom:

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Topics: Next Generation Science Standards, interactive science, Inquiry Based Learning, Next Generation Science Classroom Instruction, science education, KWL Chart, Thinking Routines

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