Or, imagine that the scene is part of a story. Is this painting telling the beginning , middle, or the end of the story? If you decide it is the middle of the story, then, what might have happened before this? What might happen after? If it is the end of the story, what happened before? You can choose to have students look at the art with or without a lens for looking. You can select random artwork and ask students to make any connection they want to or you can identify a specific focus. Students who read, re-read, repeat, and rehearse a CBRT script in preparation for performance tend to remember the information in the text. Dr. Flynn says: reading and rehearsing scripts based on curriculum content increases the likelihood that students will perform better on assessments. After one minute of contemplation, give students two to three minutes to write a personal reaction to the art on a single sentence strip. This can be in the form of a complete sentence, a phrase or a series of words. The questions of the routine are carefully worded to allow for multiple interpretations and to open up discussions. The wording of the questions in the routines also helps guides or educators format their own open-ended questions.

Option: Post the 60-second sketches alongside the original artwork. Provide students an additional opportunity to do a gallery walk and discuss or compare/contrast the sketches. In this activity, small groups of students construct original poetry. Poems are written by combining individual student’s responses to a selected painting, sculpture, photograph, portrait, image, or artifact with their classmates’ responses.by the way educators use routines for conceptual exploration ( Possibilities and Analogies, Perspective Taking, & Perspectives, Controversies and Dilemmas). However, we can use it to record any scene or special moment in a highly descriptive manner. Simply, in a few short sentences- typically five. The description is then followed by a related haiku poem (a three line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable structure). Here’s how to use this with your students:

However, if you are an educator that wants to better understand how to build better THINKERS, this book is a must! Summarizing is a skill that students will need to be able to do in every grade. Summarizing, in Bloom’s taxonomy, is found fairly low in the taxonomy- it is located in the cross between understanding and factual knowledge. There are some great online concept mapping tools. I’ve been using CMAP Tools for well over a decade, when I first learned about concept mapping through studying DH Johnassen’s notion of technology as mindtools. However, this program can be a little wonky and it looks pretty outdated. In some cases, students will want to sketch out their concept maps in a sketch-note style. But whatever the tool, the goal is for students to make sense out of their learning by showing the connections between ideas. It almost functions as a snapshot of the synaptic connections in their minds.

Do you want to integrate drama into your classroom in a simple but highly effective way? Provide an opportunity for students to improve oral reading fluency and learn vocabulary? Provide authentic writing and speaking activities? Help your students retain important facts and information about your content topics? Then, you have to look into Curriculum-Based Reader’s Theater (CBRT): an arts integration approach developed by Dr. Rosalind Flynn, an educational drama specialist. Thinking routines can also be adapted or modified to suit the needs of the group or educators can even create their own routines based on the Visible Thinking ones. After observing and discussing the artwork with a routine such as I See, I Think, I Wonder , students write lines of poetry based on sensory perceptions they might have if they were to step into the painting.