We’ve come to understand at Griffin that The Intellectual Classroom Environment is primarily about thinking with the central educator understanding being, thinking or changes in thinking equals learning. With this mindset, passive types of ‘learning’ where learners remember, replicate or reiterate aren’t viewed as genuinely developing understanding. Maybe short-term knowledge, but unlikely deep long-lasting understanding.
Ron Ritchhart and his _Cultures of Thinking_ work has influenced our shift in mindset greatly, compelling us to ponder courageously and, at times, uncomfortably if our classrooms support or hinder learner thinking. In considering our practices, Ritchhart’s _8 Cultural Forces_ propelled our transformation rapidly, challenging us to ponder the classroom environment we were creating and sustaining with our actions. Shifting our classrooms from work-orientated to Learning-Orientated spaces forced us to be honest about some of the traditional practices, values and language we were holding onto and how these smothered thinking.
The transformation of our classrooms into places that nurture thinking soon became a simple mantra borrowed from Brisbane local Jesse Richardson 
- ‘teach learners how to think, not what to think’. We began to plan Opportunities over Activities, we considered how we might use Powerful Provocations to get our learners to do more of the ‘heavy-lifting’ and we contemplated how we could further harness The Visible Classroom Environment to make thinking and, more importantly, changes in thinking, ‘visible, valued and actively promoted’. (Ritchhart, 2015).
To add... connection to Dr Peter Ellerton and hisAspiring Thinkers Network and the University of Queensland. Add in sentence about using Project Zero’s Visible Thinking Routines.
DOT FROM preview-next-diagram