Visible thinking can be quite confusing to work out. To me, it is the practice of making student reasoning available for inspection, discussion and reflection.
The finished answer is also part of that evidence. So are the observations a student selected, the questions they raised, the connections they made, the alternatives they considered and the changes they made after encountering new information.
Harvard Project Zero’s Visible Thinking framework brings together three classroom practices: thinking routines, the documentation of student thinking and reflective professional practice. A routine helps to draw out the thinking. Documentation preserves enough of it to examine. The teacher then uses that evidence to decide what students understand and what support they still need.
A completed routine can look like visible thinking even when very little reasoning has occurred. A student may know where to write on the worksheet.
Start with a thinking move
Project Zero describes thinking routines as short sequences that support and reveal student thinking. Each routine gives students a small set of moves they can reuse.
Consider Claim, Support, Question:
Make a claim.
Identify the evidence or reasoning that supports it.
Raise a question about the claim or its support.
Now place a student in a garden and ask them to choose where tomatoes should be planted.
The student looks at an open patch and writes:
Claim: “I would choose this area because it looks like it gets nice sun.”
Support: “There are no trees nearby to block the sunlight.”
Question: “Does having no trees lead to better tomato growth? Is more sun always better for tomatoes?”
The first two responses show an initial judgment. The question exposes the part that still needs investigation. “Sunny” is an impression. The student now needs evidence about whether that particular site is suitable.
That evidence might include direct sun at different times, peak temperature, soil moisture, drainage, reflected heat, airflow and the needs of the tomato variety. The student may also examine whether mulch, existing leaf cover, afternoon shade or shade cloth would reduce heat stress and fruit sunscald.
Visible thinking is found in the trail between the first choice and the later recommendation. Did the student gather information relevant to the original claim? Did they notice the trade-off between sunlight and heat? Did the evidence strengthen, limit or overturn their first idea?
The student may still choose the same patch. A change of answer is not the target. A reasoned response to evidence is.
Decide what the evidence shows
Different pieces of student work support different conclusions.
Collect the first response individually. A polished group product can hide who noticed the problem, who selected the evidence and who made the decision.
Documentation does not need to mean photographing every worksheet or filling a wall with sticky notes. Keep the traces that help you reconstruct the reasoning: an early claim, a sketch, selected observations, a question, a revision or a short explanation. If the evidence will not affect interpretation or teaching, there is little reason to collect it.
Look beyond completion of the routine
Project Zero’s work on thinking dispositions separates thoughtful behaviour into three parts:
Ability: Can the student use the thinking move?
Sensitivity: Does the student notice an occasion when the move is needed?
Inclination: Does the student choose to use it?
A worksheet can provide the occasion and the instruction. It mainly shows ability under scaffolding. Independent thinking requires more. The student must notice that a claim needs support and decide to investigate it without a heading telling them what comes next.
This is why the scaffold needs to fade, but only after the move has been taught well and the students understand it. The Education Endowment Foundation’s 2025 guidance on metacognition and self-regulated learning recommends explicit teaching, modelling and practice within subject content, followed by a careful reduction of support as pupils take more responsibility.
Removing the routine too early may measure confusion. Leaving it in place forever may only measure prompted performance.
Check what remains when the headings disappear
After students have used Claim, Support, Question in the tomato investigation, give them another decision at least two days later. Change the crop, conditions or setting. For example, ask them to recommend where lettuce should be grown during a hot month.
Do not display the routine or reproduce its three-part structure. Ask for a recommendation and collect the first individual response before discussion.
Look for evidence that the student:
notices uncertainty in the decision;
selects relevant information;
connects evidence to a recommendation;
considers an alternative or limitation; and
identifies what else they would need to know.
Use the least help first. Record whether the student needed no cue, a general prompt, the name of the routine or the full scaffold.
A weak response needs cautious interpretation. The student may lack subject knowledge, misunderstand the task, face a language or accessibility barrier, or simply have little reason to engage with that particular problem. Missing reasoning on the page does not automatically mean missing reasoning in the student.
Describe the result cautiously
There is no validated score at which Claim, Support, Question becomes a thinking habit. Use language that matches the evidence you collected.
Repeat the unannounced check across different subjects, problems and points in time. Record the least cue each student requires. Use that evidence to decide whether to model the move again, keep practising it with support, fade the scaffold further or test it in another context.
Phil