This collection contains “thinking routines” from Project Zero (PZ), a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. They deepen student thinking, help reveal students’ thinking to the teacher, and help students themselves notice and name particular “thinking moves,” making those moves more available and useful to them in other contexts. 

Here, you’ll find a sampling of thinking routines that teachers have found particularly useful in helping students think about, discuss, and learn from museum resources. Click on any thinking routine to view Project Zero’s guidelines for implementing it with students, add it to your own collection, or download it for use in offline lessons and learning activities.

This collection is organized as follows:

• The first six resources offer tips for using thinking routines effectively, Project Zero research, and an alphabetical list of all thinking routines currently available in the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Don’t miss the Project Zero Thinking Routines Toolbox, the fifth resource in this collection, which contains Porject Zero’s full set of more than 80 routines.

• The following ten sections highlight particular types of thinking alongside related routines. Some routines support the development of more than one type of thinking, and so appear in more than one category.

• The final section of the collection includes all thinking routines currently available in the Smithsonian Learning Lab in alphabetical order.

All Project Zero thinking routines are copyrighted and licensed. In the Use Rights section of each routine's information, you can find support for how to reference them when you are using them in your work.