Latest posts
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The Quieter the Room, the Louder the Thinking
We are eight posts into this series! What a wild ride it has been! Eight posts, somewhere north of twenty thinking routines. A Costco parking lot, a Tonic deep cut, This Old House, a soup can, and one very passionate argument about the Oxford comma. We have covered routines that teach students to observe carefully,…
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Before and After
I’ve always been fond of a good ‘ol home renovation show. It’s something that actually is deeply rooted in my childhood. Long before the days of brothers who had property or uppers that needed to be fixed, there was one show I would watch on the regular with my dad. This. Old. House. Not only…
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The Flight Safety Card Activity: What Stick Figures and Oxygen Masks Can Teach Your Students About What Actually Matters
Brief Update! Oh man, nothing like getting injured and sick as heck in the last 10 days of school. For the first time in AGES, I had to leave school last week because I fell physically ill (after making it to my second-floor classroom on crutches nonetheless! But, I’m back to about 90%, we’ve got…
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The Difference Between Having a Thought and Owning One
Almost 30 years ago (in July, 1996)…(god I’m old)…one of the most underrated bands of all time released their debut album Lemon Parade. The third single, released in February of 97, is what created a core musical memory for me. The song opens with its title and perfect follow-up statement: If you could only see…
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Not Everything Resolves…That’s Kind of the Point.
I want to tell you about the worst argument I have ever witnessed at a Thanksgiving dinner table. It was not about politics. It was not about religion. It was about a parking spot. My father, a man who is, in most other contexts, a perfectly reasonable human being, spent forty-five minutes constructing an airtight…
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The First Thought Is Just the Beginning (Project Zero Thinking Routines Pt 4)
We are four posts into this series now, and I want to take a second to zoom out. Post One was about giving students the tools to recognize that they’re already thinking. Post Two was about teaching them to slow down and notice things… really notice them, the way you notice a piece of art differently on…
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We Schooled the Curiosity Right Out of Them
Will Ferrell once played legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray on SNL. If you’ve never seen it, the bit is basically: Harry Caray is a man completely unmoored from social norms, asking the most unfiltered, bizarre questions imaginable: to scientists, to astronauts, to anyone fortunate enough to sit across from him, with zero apology and maximum…
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Your Students Have Thoughts. These Three Routines Make Them Say Them Out Loud.
How many of us can relate to the following situation? Last year, I was teaching a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, and we had just finished reading a primary source, a firsthand account from a Freedom Rider. Heavy stuff. Important stuff. The kind of stuff that you want students to genuinely sit with. So…
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It Takes ZERO Thought to Snag These Templates
Let me tell you something that will either deeply resonate with you or make you close this tab immediately. I think about thinking. Like… a lot. Embarrassingly a lot. From reading philosophy and psychology texts, to staring into the void and wondering why my silly “lizard brain” likes to do things. It’s all thinking about…
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Make Thinking Visible: Your New Favorite Learning Toolkit
We’ve all been there. You just finished explaining a concept, laying out a brilliant plan, or sharing an exciting new idea. You pause, look out at your audience (whether that’s a classroom of students, your kids at the dinner table, or your team at work), and you get… blank stares. It’s frustrating! We spend so…