Museum of Biblical Art Practice Thinking Routines

Teaching the Museum of Biblical Art staff about thinking routines was a total success!  These people greet the public, set up the ballroom for wedding receptions, curate collections, coordinate exhibitions, fund raising . . . yet they stepped up to the plate to participate in Thinking Routine exercises.  I established patterns of thinking in the classroom for the staff to envision how they might become the teacher in the museum environment.

 Marseille Moon at the MBA

By teaching the staff about the following patterns used by teachers in the classroom they were able to connect to and participate in the learning and teaching exercises.

HOUSEKEEPING

Manage movement and physical materials within the classroom. THESE ARE Rules and guidelines for living and working together as a group.  In connecting with the museum space an audience and a location/space would be selected such as a classroom or a specific gallery or path for a docent led tour.

MANAGEMENT

Helping the audience prepare for learning includes:

•Passing out papers

•Forming groups

•Coming to attention

•Transitioning from one activity to another

•Preparing for discussion

Having efficient and well-tuned management routines helps the audience to be focused and actually directs the learning activity or artwork production.

LEARNING

Guide the actual learning and thinking of the audience as they engage with content of an object. In the museum this would be as basic as answering the questions that follow the viewing of a piece of artwork. This routine provides a recognizable structure for the audience to work within.  Or use journals for note-taking procedures such as mind-mapping, problem-solving protocols, and classroom debates about the interpretation of a painting. FOR THE MUSEUM VISITOR TO Learn routines gives structure to the audiences’ activities and provides the tools for engaging with the content OF THE ARTWORK.

DISCOURSE

Structure the discussion and sharing of audiences’ learning, orchestrating the many types of conversations that occur among art educators and audience. We are all familiar with the routine of raising one’s hand for permission to speak, used in the classroom throughout the world. However, this is not the only way of structuring discourse.  Here are other ways of structuring ideas with all audiences.

1.  Think-Pair-Share (TPS)

2.  KWL strategy:  What do you know? What do you want to know? What have you learned?

3.  Experiences scaffold by the thinking routines.

After introducing these ideas to the eager audience, I prepared them to become the teachers by introducing.

THINK-PAIR-SHARE

1.  The teacher poses a question

2.  Provide time for students to think about the problem

3.  Ask students to pair up and discuss

4.  Students share their discussion with the whole class

Thinking routines provide structures for the museum staff to initiate, explore, discuss, document, and manage their thinking.

Thinking routines help guide students’ learning and intellectual interactions.

Teachers establish, use and adapt thinking routines to make them a part of the CULTURE of the classroom.  This establishes and maintains a thoughtful classroom environment.

KWL is another strategy used to guide learners by asking these important questions.

What do you know?

What do you want to know?

What have you learned?

Serves to structure students’ learning about a new topic and is a widely used learning routine in classrooms. This routine activates prior knowledge, engages curiosity, and prompts reflection. Think-pair-share and KWL become routines rather than merely strategies through their repeated use. This repetition of use is a key characteristic of all routines. It is what makes them common, shared practices.

Sample thinking routines from the Visible Thinking projects.

SEE-THINK-WONDER

CONNECT-EXTEND-CHALLENGE

PERCEIVE-KNOW-CARE-ABOUT

CLAIM-SUPPORT-QUESTION

LOOKING 10 X 2

THINK-PUZZLE-EXPLORE

HEADLINES

WHAT MAKES YOU SAY THAT?

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATURE OF ROUTINES

WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES A GOOD THINKING ROUTINE?

WHAT MENTAL MOVES WOULD BE EMBEDDED IN A ROUTINE AND HOW?

All classroom routines are explicit in nature, that is, they must be known by the learners.

In time, the teacher can activate a routine merely by naming it.

Having only a few steps, often identified in language that makes the thinking moves explicit, is an important characteristic of routines.

Easy to:           Teach

                        Learn

                        Remember

Routines operate as tools for getting a particular job done.  The goal of thinking routines is to scaffold and support a particular set of thinking moves.  The routines by teachers and students alike become useful tools for achieving thinking and learning goals.  They must internalize not just the actions but the purpose and message behind those actions.

Individual and Group Practice

When standing in front of a painting at a museum,

we can identify:

1.  What we see,

2.  Think what it might mean,

3.  Pose wonderings to ourselves

Thinking routines still can be of use to us in our private speculations.  This aspect of thinking routines makes them useful tools in developing visitor's ability to think.

In Review:  Characteristics of Thinking Routines

Individual and Group practices

Useful across a variety of contexts

Use over and over again

Instrumental in nature

Explicit, and

Having only a few steps

In working with teachers two additional characteristics emerged:

Flexibility and Language

WHAT KIND OF THINKING ROUTINES DO MUSEUM VISITORS PARTICIPATE IN?

Recall in a short series of steps or thinking moves.

Sample thinking routines from the Visible Thinking projects:  See/think/wonder—three steps

1.  What do you see?

2.  What do you think about that?

3.  What do you wonder about?

Each step constitutes a certain sort of cognitive behavior.

Types of Cognitive Behaviors – STUDENT AND/OR MUSEUM VISITORS

Generate lots of ideas

Give evidence and explanations

Look for comparisons and connections

Construct reason-based syntheses, summaries, and conclusions

Construct evidence-based interpretations and explanations

Make discernments and evaluations

Ask questions

Identify and explore multiple perspectives

Create metaphors

Reflect on and consolidate learning

These are photographs of the Museum of Biblical Art staff showing off their newly learned skills of teaching in the museum environment.  Staff members were asked to think-pair-share with a partner.   The slips of paper with instructions about what teaching routine to use were handed out.  I pre-selected reproductions of paintings by artists currently represented in the galleries.  I wanted the staff members to be familiar with the images they were looking at to have a prior connection.  They were given ten minutes to look at the image and determine what and how to present the particular thinking routine in reference to the reproduction.  They used computer images of art by Sunol Alvar, Victor Bregeda, Michalangelo, Kathe Kollwitz, George Tobolowsky, and Jack Terry to teach the rest of the staff about a selected thinking routines.

Photographs by Marseille Moon (unless I am in them).