Visible Thinking - See…Think…Wonder…All About Bats

My school is dedicated to helping our students to become THINKERS.  We do not want to just give them the information…we want to help them think and learn the information on their own.  We want our classrooms to be a Culture of Thinking.   Today, we used See-Think-Wonder to start digging into our learning about Bats.  I love that you can visually see how their learning and thinking got deeper as we went.

To start it off, I showed them a few pictures of bats.  We decided to use this one for our Thinking Routine:

Next, I asked them to look at the picture for a few seconds.  Then I had them volunteer to tell me what they SEE.  They replies were fairly basic, which was fine.

• eyes
• ears
• fur
• wings
• bones
• thumbs

Next, we talked about what the picture makes us THINK.  Each time they gave me an answer for this part, I asked them "What makes you say that?"  This helps them support their answer as well as dig a little deeper into their thinking.  The information in parenthesis is their answer to "What makes you say that."

• bones are close to the wings (I can see them right there.)
• it is a baby bat (It looks very small, and it's eyes are closed.)
• there are bones inside the wings (You can see the bones sticking next to the skin.)
• there is a big ear-drum inside (It has very big ears, so it must have a big ear-drum.)

Finally, we talked about what we WONDER.  This is what we don't really see from the picture, but questions that we might want answered if we researched for more information.

• what the bat is laying on
• what kind of bat it is
• why the wings are pink
• what the bones look like
• if it is a grown-up bat or a baby 

Are you as impressed as I was with their thinking?  

Of course, we had to close with a fun craft to "fly" around our room.  This is from A Cupcake for the Teacher.  Tomorrow we will add facts to our bats.