Making Learning Visible
  • Home
    • MLV Books
    • Books and Articles List >
      • Children Are Citizens
      • Downloadable Articles
    • By Teachers, For Teachers
    • Related Websites
    • Digital Resources
  • Learning Groups
    • Classroom Learning Groups >
      • Getting Started with Learning Groups >
        • Creating a Community of Learners in your Classroom
        • Looking at Learning in Groups: Visual Essay and Classroom Discussion Guidelines
        • Group Learning Features in Practice
      • Considerations when Forming a Learning Group >
        • The Individual in the Group: The Entrypoints Chart, Student Interviews, and Student Surveys >
          • Teacher Examples
        • Student Study Group Planner
      • Creating A Culture of Dialogue >
        • Changing our Skin: Creating Collective Knowledge
        • Helping Students Give and Receive Feedback
        • The Ladder of Feedback: A routine for giving feedback about an idea or artifact
      • MLV for Secondary Schools
    • Teacher Learning Groups >
      • Adult Learning Groups >
        • Sharing Documentation with Colleagues
        • Making Learning Visible Cycle of Inquiry
      • Activities for Exploring Group Learning and Documentation >
        • “Throwing Your Money Away”
        • "What Does the Internet Look Like?”
        • “Going Public: Transforming the Bulletin Board”
      • Protocols for looking at documentation >
        • Looking at Documentation: Protocols for reviewing and critiquing documentation
        • See-Think-Wonder: A routine for exploring and noticing
        • Ladder of Feedback (see Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom)
  • Documenting Learning
    • Getting Started with Documentation >
      • Getting Started with Documentation in Your Classroom
      • Documentation and Display: What’s the Difference?
      • Documentation: When Does it Make Learning Visible?
      • MYST (Me-You-Space-Time: A Reflecting Routine)
      • Documentation Features in Practice
      • Photographs as Documentation: Some Guidelines
    • The Documentation Process >
      • Sharing Documentation with Colleagues
      • Using Video: From Capturing to Downloading to Editing to Sharing
      • Documentation: Photo and Video
    • Revisiting Learning Moments >
      • Making Students' Words Visible: Speech Bubbles
      • Small books
      • Reflecting on post-its, photographs and video
  • Engaging Families
    • Informing Families about Making Learning Visible (or MLV: Why Bother?) >
      • Sample Letter Home
      • “Why Don’t You Tell the Other Kids?”
      • An Elementary School Parent’s Reflections
      • “Exploring Group Learning: An Activity and a Thought Problem”
    • Involving Families in the Learning Process >
      • Refrigerator Reminders: 5 ways to make learning visible at home
      • Inviting family members in before the end of a unit/Documenting at home and in the classroom
      • Family Study Groups
    • Communicating with Families about Learning >
      • Making Learning Visible Family Survey
      • Sharing Images of Learning
      • Another Way To Think About Bulletin Boards
  • MLV Beyond the Classroom
    • Sharing Stories of Learning >
      • Bulletin boards that make learning visible >
        • More Bulletin Board Examples
      • Engaging City Hall: Children as Citizens
      • “Zooms”
    • Schoolwide Exhibitions of Teaching and Learning >
      • Creating an Exhibition of Teaching and Learning >
        • More Exhibitions of Teaching and Learning
      • Components of Making Learning Visible
      • Graphic Design Principles: Considerations for making visual displays
    • Making Learning Visible in the Community >
      • DVD
      • Places to Play in Providence
      • Menu: “A Taste of MLV”
  • FOL/PZC
    • Blog MLV in Practice

Updated Websites: Making Learning Visible and Children are Citizens

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HGSE Offers New Program on Making Learning Visible

In this era of globalization, our ability to learn and function as part of diverse groups is essential to our capacity to survive and thrive. Yet almost all assessment and most aspects of instruction in schools still focus on promoting individual performance and achievement. In this course, you will investigate the power of the group as a learning environment, and documentation as a way to shape, extend, and make visible how and what we learn.

The work of the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, has drawn international attention to children’s capacities as individual and group learners. Based on a collaboration between Project Zero at Harvard, Reggio educators, and over 100 U.S. educators, the Making Learning Visible (MLV) framework extends key ingredients of the Reggio approach to primary and secondary schools and learners of all ages. Documenting children’s and adults’ learning challenges our assumptions about children’s capabilities and what thinking and learning look like.

In this course, you will examine rich examples of individual and group learning in a variety of classrooms. Aided by extensive online and text-based resources, you will learn what the MLV framework is, why and when it is useful, and how to apply it in your own setting to benefit students, teachers, and your school community as a whole.

Visible Learners

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A progressive, research-based approach for making learning visible 

Based on the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, Visible Learners highlights learning through interpreting objects and artifacts, group learning, and documentation to make students' learning evident to teachers. Visible classrooms are committed to five key principles: that learning is purposeful, social, emotional, empowering, and representational. The book includes visual essays, key practices, classroom and examples.

  • Show how to make learning happen in relation to others, spark emotional connections, give students power over their learning, and express ideas in multiple ways
  • Illustrate Reggio-inspired principles and approaches via quotes, photos, student and teacher reflections, and examples of student work
  • Offer a new way to enhance learning using progressive, research-based practices for increasing collaboration and critical thinking in and outside the classroom
Visible Learners asks that teachers look beyond surface-level to understand who students are, what they come to know, and how they come to know it.  


Welcome to the Making Learning Visible Resources Weebly! This site provides resources and tools to support learning in groups in the classroom and the staffroom. Most of the tools you will find here are intended for teachers, professional development designers and coaches, and administrators, though some are also designed to help families support student learning. Many also include ways to involve students more directly in teaching and learning decisions. Almost all of the tools emphasize greater intentionality combined with careful looking and listening. Making learning visible is not a recipe; it will take time to discover and adapt the tools and resources for your own setting. We hope you will find this site useful and enjoy exploring it. The site includes five kinds of tools and resources:

1.     Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom

2.     Supporting Learning in Groups in the Staffroom

3.     Documenting Individual and Group Learning

4.     Engaging Families in Supporting Student Learning

5.     Making Learning Visible Beyond the Classroom

Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom includes practical tools with suggestions for creating learning groups at the beginning of the school year, forming study groups in classrooms, and promoting a culture of dialogue. provides tools for forming adult study groups, hands-on activities for adults to explore learning groups and documentation for themselves, and conversation structures for discussing and reflecting on student learning.

Supporting Learning in Groups in the Staffroom provides tools for forming adult study groups, hands-on activities for adults to explore learning groups and documentation for themselves, and conversation structures for discussing and reflecting on student learning.

Documenting Individual and Group Learning includes resources for understanding, creating, and sharing documentation with students and colleagues. Some tools will help you think through the purpose of your documentation; others provide guidelines for gathering or sharing documentation via video, computer, photographs, or powerpoint.

Engaging Families in Supporting Student Learning offers resources to inform families about visible learning, involve families in supporting their children’s learning, and communicate with families about learning. Tools range from a refrigerator reminder to guidelines for parents interested in forming their own study group.


Making Learning Visible beyond the Classroom provides tools and templates for creating bulletin boards, documentation panels, visual essays, and schoolwide exhibitions that make learning and learners visible, with examples from preschool-high school.
 
   

seven_propositions_about_form_function_and_understanding_in_learning_groups.pdf
File Size: 62 kb
File Type: pdf
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visible_learners_flyer.pdf
File Size: 485 kb
File Type: pdf
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