PZ PGH Learning and Thinking that Make a Difference (May 2026)

If questions drive thinking and learning, how are we creating experiences and supporting conditions to ignite curiosity? Join us to explore the process of artifact analysis with the use of thinking routines. Collaborate with fellow historians to apply a design lens to history and reflect upon the power of these opportunities in our own instruction. Though the example in this workshop is with social studies, the ideas and approach are applicable across subject areas and grade levels.

We ask students to take notes constantly, but we often teach it without understanding the scaffolding it requires. For many students, note-taking is copying, not thinking. This workshop reframes documentation as a visible thinking practice using Project Zero's Cultures of Thinking framework and thinking routines. What you'll do: Engage in hands-on activities including a schema-activation Buzz Word Sort, the Parts, Purposes, and Complexities thinking routine, and design thinking experiences where you prototype and reflect on documentation templates. What you'll learn: How activating schema — what students already know — lays the groundwork for notes that stick. Why documentation is genuinely hard (it's a design problem, not a motivation problem). How thinking routines make students' thinking visible, valued, and revisited. The executive function demands embedded in note-taking — planning, prioritizing, working memory, self-monitoring — and how these capacities develop through intentional practice. How to scaffold thinking without replacing it, supporting diverse learners across different grade levels and learning environments. You'll leave with concrete instructional moves ready to adapt to your own context. The real question is not what students wrote down, but what they understood. When we design for thinking, notes become evidence of learning.