“Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based conceptual framework, which aims to integrate the development of students’ thinking with content learning across subject matters.”
(http://www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/visible-thinking)

The American Dream is a vast topic that forms part of the English curriculum of year 11 and 12.

Instead of using the classic approach of reading and analysing texts in class, the students received the challenge to become experts of one aspect of the American Dream and to transmit its central ideas with the help of a video clip following the technique of the famous Explainity Clips.

“Now, what is the benefit compared to traditional, text-based work?”, you might ask yourself. I consider the benefits of such a hands-on, practical and creative project, which deals with a rather high-brow, dry subject, remarkable:

• students need to use tools of Visual Thinking in order to transmit complex ideas with pictures and symbols instead of text, which means that they need to fully grasp the idea first
• making a video clip, showing causes and effects with the help of visualisation techniques in a limited time and commenting it at the same time, is quite a complex task
• and last but no least: it’s an entertaining and motivating activityCongratulations to class 12a! Great job!Andrea Bahmann