Thinking Stems

Years ago, I started using thinking stems daily in my teaching and it has raised the level of the teaching and learning in our classroom.  Some of my favorite thinking stems are:

• This makes me realize..
• This is important because...
• This reminds me of...
• I used to think...but now I think...
• Sometimes in life...
• This makes me think...
• Maybe...

We use these thinking stems across the day in all lessons, conversations, writing, and read aloud.  These stems appear to be simple, but they are powerful (remember, some of the best things come in small packages!).  Rather than me writing these stems on a chart and posting it in our classroom where it could gather dust and never be looked at, I hand the ownership of creating the stems over to the students.  I have a conversation with them about what a "thinking stem" is and give them a couple of examples.  Then I have them turn and talk to brainstorm some other possibilities. We talk about the purpose of the thinking stems and students realize how the thinking stems can deepen and extend their thinking to higher levels.  Once we generate a list of about ten thinking stems, students volunteer to write one of the thinking stems on white oaktag, making it colorful and decorating it with illustrations.  I hang these decorated and personalized thinking stems on our walls where they stay all year and we continue to add to the walls throughout the year as we develop new and revised thinking stems.  Since the students make the thinking stems, they truly use them daily as a reference when they are turning and talking with partners, having whole class conversations, writing about their reading, writing during writing workshop, and during lessons.

 Examples of Decorated Thinking Stems Created by Students

More Examples of Decorated Thinking Stems Created by Students

When students have conversations with their partners, partner 1 will share his/her thinking while partner 2 will give thinking stems as prompts to push his partners thinking to higher levels - the students love doing this because they feel like the teacher!  The students also love to give me thinking stems while I am thinking aloud about a read aloud or modeling my thinking during a minilesson - they try to stump me and love watching my wheels spin to think of how to use the stem to lift the level of my thinking :). 

While writing about their reading or working on a writing piece, students use thinking stems as a visual strategy to deepen their thinking and grow their original ideas.  For example, they write an idea on the top of the page and continue to build upon the idea by using arrows and thinking stems. This shows them how they can begin with one idea and end up with a new and more complex idea.

Happy Reading and Thinking! :)