Elliott Kern
Teaching Portfolio
Circles of Thinking
Circles of Thinking was a visible thinking technique I created with Lisa Graff's novel Tangle of Knots. In the novel, there are many different characters and the story weaves in and out of different perspectives. The two 4th grade classes that read it struggled at times to keep up with the many changes. I thought of this activity to get them to see the way the story worked.
The chains you see in the picture were 4 out of the 7 characters we worked on. As you can see, the chains all led to New York City, where the characters wound up. Each class wrote character traits and the chain of events that led each person to New York City. It was a great visual for them to see the story!
"Georgies" of Viewpoints
"Georgies" of Viewpoints was an adapted activity from Ritchhart's "Circle of Viewpoints." This activity was based on Lisa Graff's novel The Thing About Georgie. The story is about a boy named Georgie who has dwarfism, and struggles at school with different people and events. So, instead of using circles, I cut out Georgies to the size that he was (42 inches). This gave the students another visual of what Georgie's height was. Then, the students portrayed 4 different characters from the story: Georgie, Georgie's parents, Jeanie "the Meanie", and Andy. They discussed what life was like for Georgie from each perspective!
Compass Points
Compass points is a visible thinking activity from Ritchhart that has students examine a controversial issue through four points: What excites them about the issue, what they need to know more about, what their stance is, and what worries them. The issue they discussed was peer pressure from Lisa Graff's novel Double Dog Dare. It led to a lot of great and open peer to peer conversations after they wrote their opinions on the sticky notes!
Making Thinking Visible
"Making Thinking Visible" by Ron Ritchhart has been a fantastic way of getting students to see their thinking visibly and learn a process of discussing their thinking with one another until it becomes a habit. I used the many techniques he provided in his book during my media specialist long term with the books by one of the Authors in April, Lisa Graff.
 Georgie |
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 Jeanie |
 Georgie's Parents |
 Andy |
Chalk Talk
Chalk Talk is an activity where students have back and forth discussions about an issue. It resembles a conversation, but the conversation becomes visible so they can see their thoughts. This again was about peer pressure in reference to Double Dog Dare. I decided to combine Chalk Talk with the Google Apps they've been learning. What you see to your left were conversatins they had using Google Apps. One student shared the drawing with another, and they were able to write and create the Chalk Talk together. It was a great activity!
Tug For Truth
Tug For Truth was a visible activity with Double Dog Dare and peer pressure where students used sticky notes to visibly weigh their evidence and discussion. They were given the prompt "Peer Pressure is bad" and then had to write whether they agree or not and why. They then discussed with partners their reasoning and put their sticky notes on the poster to see which side had more. This activity was able to literally able to show them which side had more evidence to win the "tug for truth."
