From the Ontario Ministry of Education - Capturing Thinking

Source: Making Thinking Visible Facebook page (August 2014): https://www.facebook.com/MakingThinkingVisible/photos/a.243661132352216.73810.232080106843652/805718336146490/?type=1&theater 

A Map of Thinking involved in Understanding

Here's a great example of the See-Think-Wonder protocol:
http://prezi.com/isrcbgjd9ubr/a-map-of-thinking-involved-in-understanding/

Celebrating 15 Years of Making Learning Visible | Harvard Graduate School of Education

Celebrating 15 Years of Making Learning Visible | Harvard Graduate School of Education

Visual Thinking & The Writing Process

View more PowerPoint from Ryan Coleman | Freelance Information Designer & Facilitator

A-08 Making Thinking Visible in History Education: May 4, 2012 – Middle School Subject Council, Fredericton - Cynthia Wallace-Casey (UNB)

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey,
PhD Candidate
University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

Agenda for the day 

Introduction – What is making thinking visible?

What is Thinking?

What is Understanding?

The Big Picture (Historic Space Mapping)

What is Historical thinking?

The Little Picture (Heritage Fair projects)

Historical inquiry – working with sources

Memory cases

                St Croix – 1604

                School Culture – 1900

                Governance – J Leonard O’Brien – 1960

                WWI – 1918

                York Street, Fredericton - 1882

Wrap-up – Tying it back to the history map

How did you organize your data? What stories are told?

Making Thinking Visible Backgrounder

For those interested in the long line of research that lead up to Making Thinking Visible, check out this prezi presentation by Ron Richhart, Cultures of Thinking History:

Arts-based Research... Meets Collective Memory... and Making Thinking Visible...

Alberta’s eugenics history

(Edmonton) Agata Derda grew up in Poland, but, intrigued with studying cultural differences, lived in Ireland as a young undergraduate arts student.

Along the way, she discovered something that inspires her work: “People are similar to each other, no matter where they were raised or where they live.”

Now, as a master’s student in the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts, Derda’s explorations in printmaking contemplate the great human chain, and are included in The Collective Memory Project, an art show that opens Oct. 23 at the U of A’s Faculty of Extension Gallery at Enterprise Square. An opening reception has been planned for 2 to 4 p.m. that day, with everyone welcome to attend.

Featuring a range of contemporary art such as paintings, digital printmaking, sculptural mixed media and archival photographs, The Collective Memory Project caps off Alberta Eugenics Awareness Week, Oct. 15–23, and contemplates both the legacy and contemporary attitudes about eugenic ideas in Alberta.

“There’s a danger of forgetting Alberta’s history with eugenics and that sort of forgetting is not an idle happenstance; I would argue that eugenics—while being a dark, traumatic event in history that begs remembrance for ethical reasons—hasn’t ended,” said Anne Pasek, curator for the exhibit, and a recent U of A Faculty of Arts graduate.

Between 1929 and 1972, more than 2,800 people who were deemed unfit by the government to raise families of their own underwent reproductive sterilization in Alberta. Other dark examples of Canadian eugenics policies include a head tax levied on Chinese immigrants and a residential school system that saw Aboriginal children seized from their families and their cultures.

But while those past actions have since been acknowledged by governments as unjust, some contemporary policies are also troubling, Pasek said.

“There are many aspects of public policy and collective ethics that are still profoundly influenced by eugenic ideas,” including selective immigration policies that screen out people with disabilities, and future ethical quandaries such as the question of “designer” babies, Pasek said.

The Collective Memory Project investigates how the concept of “personhood” “is unequally distributed in society,” she added.

The show features 20 works submitted by artists from across Canada, including an incarcerated woman, a man with a learning disability and, from an East Coast artist, an ambitious piece of performance art from a walk through an Edmonton park named for Louise McKinney. McKinney, who became Alberta’s first female MLA in 1917 and was a pioneer of women’s rights, was also a supporter of eugenics policies.

Students from the University of Alberta also contributed to the Collective Memory Project, Derda among them. Her three black and white digital photo compositions in the show pay tribute human individuality, and at the same time, explore a common human bond.

“We are all elements, puzzles, pieces of a much bigger construction, which we all create and influence. By excluding some of the puzzles we make that image incomplete,” said Derda. “Believing naively that our own experience is the most important and unique, we tend to overlook the fact that there is a world around us and we are all part of it.”

The show aims to widen the public’s understanding of eugenics and make it a “contemporary concern, so hopefully when people view the art, they’ll get a sense of how they can act on some of these problems,” Pasek said.

The show will also feature a community board where people are encouraged to write their reflections on sticky notes that will be posted for a collective remembrance in keeping with the exhibit theme.

The Collective Memory Project runs at the Faculty of Extension Gallery in Enterprise Square, 10230-Jasper Avenue, until Nov. 23 and can be viewed from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Friday and 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekends.

Education for the 21st Century – Making Thinking Visible

NB Heritage Education Learning Circle Presentation
October 13, 2011 - Moncton
Cynthia Wallace-Casey

Making Thinking Visible in Museums

10 (+1) Reasons Why Heritage Fairs are Good for You!

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey
PhD Student, University of New Brunswick

Now that all have returned to school, those of us in New Brunswick’s heritage community are looking forward and planning with eager anticipation for Heritage Fairs! So with this blog entry… in honour of project-based learning and disciplinary inquiry, I am taking on my motherly persona today to dish out some words of advice as to why Heritage Fairs are good for you. :)

Feel free to add your own comments and build upon my list:

1. You do not have to listen to your teacher talk…

• (facilitates independent study and helps to establish a classroom culture of thinking)

2. Let’s you ask Big Questions – like why is this topic significant? And whose voice is left out of this narrative?
• (promotes critical historical literacy)

3. Hones your research skills…
• (recognizes history as a discipline with its own unique modes of inquiry)

4. Let’s you make your thinking visible…

• (requires students to document their thinking visually)

5. Let’s you be creative…

• (supports differentiated learning and provides students with their own entry points into the past)

6. Gives you a soapbox for discussion…
• (strengthens language skills and allows students to express themselves verbally in a meaningful way)

7. Let’s you get to know people who work in your archives and museums...

• (requires students to examine the residua of the past first-hand by seeking out primary sources)

8. Makes you realize that you cannot believe everything that you read or see in communication media…
• (promotes critical thinking)

9. Let’s you make friends with old people in your community…

• (promotes transmission of knowledge and experience between generations)


10. You will come to see that history is complex and there are no easy answers…
• (recognizes complexity and diversity within the past)

And (one more)...

11. Makes you smarter!...
• (National History Day researchers in the United States have found that student participants perform better on standardized tests, are better writers, and are more confident and capable researchers.)

Re-membering the Past

(UNB - January 26, 2010)

“We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
(Anaïs Nin, 1903-1977)

Objective: To familiarize students with links between 6 concepts of Benchmarks of Historical Thinking, community-based research, and project-based learning as reflected through Heritage Fairs;To understand the dynamics of personal, collective and historical memory in action.

Target Audience: Grade 9 (Canadian Identity)

Subject Focus: Canada and New Brunswick in the 1960’s

1. Conceptual Framework:

My Canada Includes the Atlantic Provinces (Margaret Conrad, 2001)

Personal Memory/Collective Memory/Historical Memory

Canada in the 1960's:

Marshall McLuhan - Explorations - 05-18-1960 -The World is a Global Village

2. Historical Memory: Historiography
Begin with the textbook ...

"Then and Now" activity

3. Collective Memory: Community-based Project Learning:

Develop a research question
Analyze the evidence:
Analyzing the secondary sources - "Analyzing the Account"
Analyzing the documents - "Analyzing Additional Documents"
Analyzing the images - "Interpreting Images"
Analyzing the artifacts - "Analyzing Traces"
Analyzing the discourses - "Analyzing Propaganda"
Using the concepts of Historical Thinking to reach a conclusion - "Historical Inquiry Checklist"

"Re-membering" the past - creative writing activity

4. Personal Memory - Identity: Creating a Heritage Fair Project - "Finding your Place in History"

Visualizing historical thinking - "Heritage Fair Project Storyboard"Conducting oral interviews - Interviews with Our Grandparents

5. On-line Resources:

Teaching Historical Thinking:

• Benchmarks of Historical Thinking

• History Matters

• Nine Habits for Success in Teaching History

Heritage Fairs in New Brunswick:

• NB Heritage Fairs

• NB Heritage Week

Warm-up Activities:

• Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History

• The Virtual Historian

Primary and Secondary Resources:

• CBC Archives – Les Archives de Radio-Canada

• Library and Archives Canada Learning Centre

• Youtube

• Flickr

• McCord Museum - Keys to History

• Virtual Museum of Canada

• Provincial Archives of New Brunswick

• Centre d'études acadiennes

• Ancestry.ca

• This Week in NB History

6. Bibliography:
Mike Denos and Roland Case. Teaching about Historical Thinking: Tools for Historical Understanding. Vancouver: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2006.

Mike Bowman et al. Exemplars in Historical Thinking: 20th Century Canada. Vancouver: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2008.

Thom Markham. Project Based Learning Handbook: A Guide to Standards-Focused Project Based Learning for Middle and High School Teachers. Novato: Buck Institute for Education, 2003.

Ian Hundey. 9 Habits for Success in Teaching History. Toronto: Edmond Montgomery Publications Limited, 2007.

Avis Fitton. Canadian Identity: Teacher's Resource. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007