I set up a repeating event in my calendar — Wednesday, 7 a.m. — that prompts me to choose a tool from Project Zero’s Thinking Routines stack*.
I quickly click a box and select a tool. Lack of forethought and purpose is part of the fun for me. Picking a tool is like picking an Oblique Strategy . . . and in the same way, I allow the tool to create a ripple in my day, using it, where possible, in the class I teach or in the meetings I run. So far, so good.
Today, for example, I used this slide in my English class.
I asked my students to share what they wrote, and many of them developed a similar idea: “I originally thought that comic books or graphic novels were just for fun or funny thoughts, but I now think that this type of storytelling is not only useful for telling serious stories but may be preferable.” Just like that, a whole class of teenagers acknowledged that they had changed their mind about something and solidified a new layer of understanding about the role of storytelling in their lives.
*H/T to Eric Hudson for tweeting about these routines and bringing them to my attention. To know him is to learn from him.
Refreshing Wednesday, LLC 