June 2023

The 3-2-1 Bridge thinking routine achieved authenticity by adding personal value to students’ understanding of day and night. Educators can leverage the language of thinking within this routine to ensure the scientific knowledge constructed has purpose and 21st century applications that are meaningful beyond the science classroom (Ritchie, 2019). All too often, diagnostic assessment is completed by students before content delivery and is never used again to stimulate learning. Using the 3-2-1 Bridge routine in my Year 8 Astronomy class made me appreciate that the exploration of a new topic does not just happen at the beginning of a lesson (Ritchhart et al., 2011). I noticed the students were thinking deeply about their thoughts, questions, and analogies associated with the concept of day and night hours both prior to, and after, the instructional period. In the concluding lesson, students reviewed their original thoughts, questions, and analogy before thinking beyond their initial understandings and performing the second 3-2-1 (Ritchhart et al., 2011). The value of this second phase is that students have their own work from the first 3-2-1 to conduct critical comparisons and reflections, which allows them to debunk their own misconceptions. As a result, it became clear that the students had developed their own sense of ‘agency’ (Johnston, 2004). A student example of two completed 3-2-1 phases, with more in-depth responses after the instructional period, is shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A Year 8 student’s completion of the two 3-2-1 Bridge phases.

Although I had witnessed major shifts in the students’ thinking, the bridging component of this routine is what solidified the thinking for students. Through collaborative discussion, I asked students to discuss the evolution of their own thinking. To encourage elaboration based on evidence from the stimulus, I would ask, ‘what makes you say that’? This open-ended question is useful when there is an opportunity for a student to explain their thinking on a particular topic for their own benefit and that of their peers (Ritchhart et al., 2011). Science educators emphasise that the bridging phase of this thinking routine is about making connections between students’ current ideas and their previous ones. By doing so, students are not only naming and noticing their own thinking but also using its visibility to engage in valuable discussion with others. Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate: Using a concept map to make both deep and surface level thinking visible (Year 10 Biology) As science educators, we know different teaching strategies can result in varying degrees of cognition for students. How we structure our lessons can determine whether our learning environment is fostering deep or surface-level thinking (Marton & Salijo, 1976). For instance, if we want students to be able to think deeply about a topic, we devote both time and resources to content delivery and activities that allow students to rehearse the desired skill. If we want students to simply attain a surface-level understanding, the applied emphasis and time allocation may be reduced. The Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate thinking routine targets both the students’ recollection of surface-level knowledge and their rehearsal of deep thinking, through the consideration of how and why scientific concepts are interconnected. In my Year 10 Biology class, I used this thinking routine at the end of the year to encourage students to make informed connections between our Semester 1 and Semester 2 units of work. The central topic I selected was DNA. The Year 10 students completed this task in a collaborative setting where each group member’s strengths were recognised and utilised (Australian Government, 2016). I initially provided some instructional scaffolding relating to the requirements of a concept map and its ability to diagrammatically represent one’s thinking, before allowing students to start the generate phase. I believe this step is crucial to ensure students understand the requirements of the task prior to being immersed in the learning experience.

School-wide Pedagogy Newsletter June Edition 2023

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