Time to Think Webinar #1: History Education with Visible Thinking – A Refresher

This series of online peer learning activities is geared toward history and civics teachers in Europe who have already had an introduction to thinking routines. As active users, we are looking to build a community of practitioners with whom to try out and expand our toolkit of visible thinking routines. Participants will receive a brief refresher of the foundational concepts of Project Zero and how they relate to history education (and can be applied to elevate historical thinking and learning). Together, we will discuss how thinking routines can be used in different learning phases and activities in the history and civics classroom: Engaging with primary sources, textbook resources, and historical narratives, we will focus on how to empower students to decipher, understand, and explain texts, how to analyze them, and how to evaluate them critically. Going beyond the classroom, we will try out how to incorporate thinking routines in visits of museums, memorials, and monuments. The webinar will have alternating sessions between theory and methods on the one hand and reflections on using thinking routines in one’s own practices as a history and civics educator on the other. See an overview of all the events here.

The first session will provide a brief refresher of Project Zero (PZ) visible thinking, developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Participants will get to know the rationale behind the development of PZ, focusing on thinking routines and visible thinking. Participants will then look at how PZ could be applied to history and civics classrooms, practically exploring the potential of visible thinking for the different learning phases, their progression, and competencies.