Invisible Cities: The Arts and Renewable Community

Teaching Strategies

Art Based Research

By blending note taking and qualitative research through an aesthetic process students use art making to collect data and conduct analysis

Gallery Walk

Students post work on tables or walls then walk around the room observing each other's work. Students will later use those observations to discuss the work in a small group or as a whole class.

Graphic Organizers

Visual representations of knowledge, concepts, and ideas to help students organize their information.

Headlines

This routine helps students capture the core or heart of the matter being studied or discussed. It also can involve them in summing things up and coming to some tentative conclusions.

This routine draws on the idea of newspaper-type headlines as a vehicle for summing up and capturing the essence of an event, idea, concept, topic, etc. The routine asks one core question: 1. If you were to write a headline for this topic or issue right now that captured the most important aspect that should be remembered, what would that headline be? A second question involves probing how students' ideas of what is most important and central to the topic being explored have changed over time: 2. How has your headline changed based on today's discussion? How does it differ from what you would have said yesterday?

I Used to Think… But Now I Think…

This routine helps students to reflect on their thinking about a topic or issue and explore how and why that thinking has changed. It can be useful in consolidating new learning as students identify their new understandings, opinions, and beliefs. By examining and explaining how and why their thinking has changed, students are developing their reasoning abilities and recognizing cause and effect relationships.

Remind students of the topic you want them to consider. It could be the ideal itself—fairness, truth, understanding, or creativity—or it could be the unit you are studying. Have students write a response using each of the sentence stems: I used to think...But now, I think...

Learning Wall

Wall space within the classroom to post student observations, questions, notes, photos, sketches, and newly discovered information about a learning topic that is ongoing. This visual representation of student learning expands as student knowledge grows.

Mind Maps

From silent observations of places, people, and events students draw and write a visual interpretation of what they experienced. Conversations rooted within the mind maps allow students to share their thinking verbally and visually

Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha is a slide presentation format where the presenter shares 20 slides that are timed to advance after 20 seconds. The presenter shares their work and ideas within this time frame followed by an opportunity for questions and group discussion. This format encourages both presenters to be concise when sharing their ideas and an audience to think about the whole presentation before giving input.

See Think Wonder

This routine encourages students to make careful observations and thoughtful interpretations. It helps stimulate curiosity and sets the stage for inquiry.

The routine works best when a student responds by using the three stems together at the same time, i.e., "I see..., I think..., I wonder...." However, you may find that students begin by using one stem at a time, and that you need to scaffold each response with a follow up question for the next stem.