January 8, 2024

Thinking of writing a book? Our current book, 21 Visual Thinking Tools for the Classroom: Developing Real-World Problem Solvers in Grades 5-10, is designed to specifically help students with their engagement and problem-solving and will be published by Routledge next summer. Having just submitted our manuscript to our publisher, we wanted to share our experiences. 

A for Anticipate 

When we were in schools after the pandemic it was clear that they were dealing with many new social and emotional issues (the impacts of which are still to be fully understood). We anticipated that teachers would need different ways to support students, and believed our thinking tools, such as The Thinking Generator Toolⓒ and the Knowledge Twister Toolⓒ could help. Our belief was validated from the responses from principals, teachers and students. 

W is for Why 

Why do you want to write this particular book? You need to be clear about ‘why’, in order to work out the ‘how’ and not give up. Through our teaching experience we knew we had a concept that could help move educators to focus on metacognition and ethical issues could change students’ learning experiences; away from content towards creativity and innovative thinking.…