This afternoon our Professional Learning Group (PLG) began our discussion of Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison. Our PLG has been going for two years and with staff leaving and new staff coming in each year the number remains about 8 - 10 people. Up until now we have read articles and reports to discuss. Terie (my colleague, teaching coach and HOD Math) and I try to provide treats to eat - today Terie made an amazing carrot cake for us - good food and friendly chat with colleagues makes for a great PLG meeting. This is our first book. We started with the first two chapters.
We started by viewing one of the clips from the DVD that came with the book. This is a new variation on our PLG. It did slant our discussion towards critiquing the thinking routine we saw being used rather than the chapters we had read. I have been trying to use thinking routines more in my lessons these days as I want the students much more involved and engaged with their own learning. The focus of the first chapter was to show how thinking and learning share the goal of creating understanding. The thinking routines, explaining thinking through Blooms taxonomies or other models all need to enable the students to come to an understanding of the subject they are learning.
We will be reading the entire book and discussing it over the next few weeks. More cake and friendly chat to come.