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 Back to Routines
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PERCEIVE, KNOW, CARE ABOUT
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A routine for getting inside viewpoints
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TThree core questions guide students in the process of exploring a viewpoint:
- What can the person or thing perceive?
- What might the person or thing know about or believe?
- What might the person or thing care about?
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What kind of thinking does this routine encourage? |
This routine helps students to explore diverse perspectives and viewpoints as they try to imagine things, events, problems, or issues differently.
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When and where can I use it? |
Use the routine when you want students to open up their thinking and look at things differently. It can be used as an initial kind of problem solving brainstorm that open ups a topic, issue, or item. It can also be used to help make abstract concepts, pictures, or events come more to life for students.
Exploring different perspectives can lead to a richer understanding of what is being studied. For instance, imagining oneself as the numerator in a fraction of a math problem. In other settings, exploring different viewpoints can open up possibilities for further exploration. For example, following this routine a student might write a poem from the perspective of a soldier?s sword left on the battlefield.
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What are some tips for starting and using this routine? |
This routine asks students to step inside the role of a character or object?from a picture they are looking at, a story they have read, an element in a work of art, an historical event being discussed, and so on?and to imagine themselves inside that point of view. Students are asked to speak or write from that chosen point of view.
In getting started with the routine the teacher might invite students to look at an image and ask them to generate a list of the various perspectives or points of view embodied in that picture. Students then choose a particular point of view to embody or talk from, saying what they perceive, know about, and care about. Sometimes students might state their perspective before talking. Other times, they may not and then the class could guess which perspective they are speaking from.
In their speaking and writing, students may well go beyond these starter questions. Encourage them to take on the character of the thing they have chosen and talk about what they are experiencing. Students can improvise a brief spoken or written monologue, taking on this point of view, or students can work in pairs with each student asking questions that help their partner stay in character and draw out his or her point of view.
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How does it make thinking visible, and how can I document it? |
Students? responses can be written down so that various perspectives can be examined and contrasted. This might take the form of a grid in which the perspectives are listed at the top and the three questions down the left-hand side. Using the grid, a teacher might ask, whose position seems the most similar to each? Different? Most like your own?
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