Guiding Elementary Students to Show Their Thinking

Educators maximize learning when we make our thinking and strategies visible to students by modeling or providing an example. Additionally, asking students to make their thinking visible to others allows us to see their strengths and the next steps needed to effectively coach and support deeper learning. While we often think of visible learning as written text, it can also include oral language, particularly early in elementary school. We can gain a great deal of understanding from listening to others. Below are some teaching practices that support visible learning.

Teacher Modeling

When we model a strategy or process, we empower students by helping them understand the success criteria and where they are heading in their own learning. One way to do this is to use a document camera to model writing, which shows the teacher as a writer. This motivates students by giving them a clear idea of how they might proceed.

When we revise our writing using a document camera, especially when using a different-color tool for editing, students see how revising can improve writing and that this is what all writers do. Document cameras can demonstrate reading strategies through text annotation and math strategies, as well. 

We can also make success criteria visible with a rubric. Rubrics can be developed by the teacher, cocreated with students, or derived from a curricular resource. I‘ve found cocreating rubrics with students to be the most effective way to help them understand what’s expected, say it in their own words, and feel invested in using the tool to improve. Because it‘s harder to assess and revise your own work, using a rubric with a generic example can be helpful.

A generic example can be an anonymous text from a former student or a student in another class, which intrigues students because they know it was written by a peer. I find it useful to save some key student artifacts from year to year or ask a teacher who already taught the lesson to make a copy of a student sample. When I share these with my students, I remove any names unless I’m using an exemplar and have asked the owner for permission.

I’ve seen a huge impact when teachers post four descriptors from a rubric on a bulletin board. Then they model how to read a paper and decide which descriptor matches the paper. Next, students take another piece of writing and decide which descriptor it falls under. Finally, students try this with their own writing.

Students then discuss in pairs where they think another piece of writing might fall. This sets the stage for students to analyze their own writing and see where it falls on the rubric. This can be used for math problems as well, where students rank a number of strategies according to how efficient they are for a particular problem.

Interactive modeling can make collaboration, social and emotional, and academic skills visible. An extremely effective way to use interactive modeling is to demonstrate partner talk. The teacher can partner with another student or another teacher, or two students can model their turn-and-talk. The class then describes what they saw in positive terms (for example: I saw Jaliya build off what Mario said).

After students discuss what an effective partner talk looks like, sounds like, and feels like, they practice and receive feedback. This is not a onetime experience. We all can learn how to improve our talk over time by deepening our skills. When students talk with each other, a teacher listens to assess student learning, which makes thinking visible.

When we read, much of the thinking that goes on inside our head is not visible. In order to develop strong readers who comprehend and analyze text, we can think aloud as we read. Give students a copy of a text and project it so they can see it as you read. Instruct them to follow along as you read, and tell them why this is important—it helps them focus on the content and on recognizing words. Stop at intentionally planned parts of the text to describe your thinking. Make sure this thinking is anchored in grade-level standards, so that you are providing students with complex ideas.

Here is an example of this: I saw the author wrote ___ here. That is helping me understand the main idea on this page. The sentence stems can be listed on an anchor chart that grows over time, which provides students with a tool to refer to in their own thinking and talking about reading.

Students’ Visible Thinking

When students make their thinking visible, teachers and peers can assess, provide feedback, and determine the next steps. Students can also self-assess themselves, determine the next steps, and look back at growth to celebrate and reflect on what helped them grow. This builds student agency while maximizing and accelerating learning.

It’s important for teachers to consider what information students need to make visible and to offer a variety of ways to show this learning, depending on the standards and the task.

For example, annotation of text enables students to show what they notice in a text and how they are synthesizing information. They can underline, highlight, star, write notes in the margins, etc. Students can use annotation with any kind of text: a transcript, a student’s own writing, a math strategy, an informational text, etc.

In math, students can write out their math strategies and/or dictate them. Often when a student describes a strategy orally, it is more complex than what they can express by writing, especially when a strategy is new to them or uses higher order thinking. 

To make students’ writing even more visible, make sure that their revisions are evident. By color-coding their revisions, students can see the changes, and so can others, including families and teachers. 

The more we listen in and provide opportunities for visible thinking, the more we unlock the puzzles of learning and empower students to make their own moves and grow. This builds students’ metacognition and affirms all the work they do day-to-day. Not only is making thinking visible important to accelerate learning, but also it’s critical for developing a generation equipped to lead in an ever-changing global society.