The Meta-Cognitive Frames of Reference: Taking Thinking Maps to the Next Level (Part 2- The Blue Frame)

Before proceeding with this blog post, I would like to quickly address a possible misunderstanding. While it might seem to the reader that I believe the mere use of Thinking Maps will cure all that ails us in public education, nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead, I see Thinking Maps as blank canvases on which to neatly and efficiently bring together a diverse set of pedagogical theories and techniques. It just so happens that some of the many “paints” that can be applied to these canvases are the Meta-Cognitive Frames of Reference questions, which were, of course, developed by the Thinking Maps company (Sorry about the lame extended metaphor!). Eventually, this blog will delve into many non-Thinking Map ideas such as Gradual Release of Responsibility, Historical Thinking, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Collaborative Structures, Intellectual Virtues, and Literature Circles. My point is that Thinking Maps, when used to their fullest potential, allow me to layer some or all of these wonderful tools into a single, easily digestible graphic. Okay, on with my discussion of the Blue Frame!

Whereas the Green Frame of Reference asks students to consider the relatively straightforward question of where they got their information, the Blue Frame involves the much more cognitively challenging issue of what is (potentially) influencing that information. The implications of this question are powerful and far-reaching. It is one thing to know information came from a particular book; it is another thing entirely to understand how the information in the book has been influenced by its author’s point of view and the social and historical contexts in which it was produced.

The Blue Frame: What is influencing the information?

To paraphrase Dani Rojas, The Blue Frame is LIFE! 

My guess is, if you ask the average (cool) teacher about her hopes for her students, you won’t hear much about scores, grades, or points. Instead, you will likely hear terms like empathy, perspicaciousness (assuming said cool teacher has a sweet vocabulary), lifelong learning, social and emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity, and so on. It is my fervent belief that the Blue Frame is one of the most potent tools at your disposal in the struggle to achieve these noble goals. Oh, and it will also, magically, improve your students’ scores, grades, and points simultaneously. I am so certain of this point, that I suggest you start worrying less about how to incorporate the Blue Frame into your curriculum and more about how to incorporate your curriculum into the Blue Frame. Put another way, if you can teach your students to consistently identify and consider the points of view of themselves and others, recognize bias, distinguish between types of sources of information, and perceive the influence of historical and social issues on those sources, you have won my friend!

Point of View

As with the other frames, the Blue Frame is divided into two main guiding questions, the first of which is:

Is a specific point of view influencing the information in your map?

As I glance around my classroom, I see the term “Point of View,” or its synonym “Perspective,” just about everywhere. Here is proof:

The reasons for the ubiquity of these terms should be obvious, but in case they are not, here are a few (or more!) to ponder:

• In literary analysis, students need to learn to discern the points of view of characters, narrators, authors, and themselves as readers. Point of View is similarly important when analyzing informational texts; Wonders frequently asks students to identify authors’ viewpoints.

• Although many sources refer to it as Opinion Writing, the truth is that, when students are asked to “Explain Why with Reasons” in the upper grades, it is almost always Point of View Writing they are being prompted to do; the difference, according to WFTB, is that Opinion Writing is more open-ended, whereas Point of View writing requires students to choose one of a limited number of stances (usually two or three).

• I am a huge fan of the Stanford History Education Group’s Read Like a Historian program. The purpose of the program is to teach students to source, contextualize, corroborate, and close read primary and secondary sources. All of these thinking skills require students to consider points of view, as well as literally all of the other Blue Frame questions.

• Merriam-Webster defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.” In other words, empathy is all about understanding the points of view of others. Given the power and importance of this SEL skill, shouldn’t we take every opportunity available to practice it with our students? 

• Jason Baehr, a philosophy professor at Loyola Marymount, identifies Open-Mindedness as one of the nine intellectual virtues that will improve students’ thinking in all areas of study. He describes this virtue as: “An ability to think outside the box. Gives a fair and honest hearing to competing perspectives.”

• The frequent consideration of Point of View has crucial metacognitive benefits. From a Bloom’s Taxonomy perspective, discerning the points of view of others requires analysis/inference skills, while determining one’s own point of view is a matter of judgment/evaluation. Before determining a point of view, a student should compare and contrast the available options (Double Bubble) before supporting their chosen point of view with reasons (Left-Sided Partial Multi-Flow).

Bias/Primary and Secondary Sources

The two follow-up questions on the Point of View side of the Blue Frame are:

Is there a specific point of view influencing the content/ideas in your map? Is that point of view biased?

and

Is the information in your map influenced by a primary or secondary source?

The importance of teaching kids about Bias deserves its own blog post. Being keenly aware of bias will, of course, make kids better consumers of social media, news, books, textbooks, websites, and the like, but it will also cause them to be more intellectually humble and honest with themselves. The ability to distinguish between primary and secondary sources is a foundational skill in Social Studies and supports the analysis of bias because each type of source has its own implicit biases.

Historical or Social Issues

The guiding question on the other side of the Blue Frame is:

Are there any historical or social issues influencing the information in your map?

The supporting questions are:

Does a specific time period influence your thinking about the information in your map?

and 

Are there any cultural beliefs that are influencing your thinking?

I find these questions particularly helpful in Social Studies, but they are also quite relevant in literary analysis. When reading historical fiction, or any story written some time ago, students should consider how differences in technology, language, and social/cultural norms affect the narrative. It is also always important to be aware of the historical, social, and cultural circumstances in which an author wrote a novel or story. The same can be said for informational text as well.

Uses and Examples

I believe that, like the other frames, the Blue Frame questions were originally intended to help students reflect on the thinking they have done in the maps. The Bubble Map below, in which I ask students to consider their own biases regarding a character, provides an example.

Adding a Blue Frame question at the bottom of a map like this can help you increase rigor, review concepts and skills, and/or connect the map to other parts of the curriculum.

As I suggested above, the Blue Frame questions are often grade level standards in and of themselves. Whether they are or not, I think it makes sense to teach them explicitly as frequently as possible. As an illustration, here is a map I recently created to help students analyze author’s viewpoint in informational text:

Notice that, in both sample maps above, I used blue font to emphasize that certain questions and prompts pertain to this Frame.

The goal for all of the Frames of Reference questions should be for kids to apply them to their thinking without being prompted to do so. Incorporating them into assignments and/or making them the focus of assignments will help you achieve this goal. I realize this is all a lot to digest, but I hope you have found it helpful and enlightening. Next time, I will review the third and final frame: Red!

Here are the links to my other two posts about the Frames, along with one about the importance of Thinking Maps:

Green Frame: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-meta-cognitive-frames-of-reference.html

Red Frame: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-meta-cognitive-frames-of-reference.html

What's So Great About Thinking Maps?: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2021/10/whats-so-great-about-thinking-maps.html

Always Writing,

Eric Lovein

PS: Check out my post about Summarizing Flow Maps!: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2022/03/thinking-maps-for-fictional-narrative.html

...and my video on Circle Maps!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQ9RkXXZcI

The Meta-Cognitive Frames of Reference: Taking Thinking Maps to the Next Level (Part 1- The Green Frame)

I have a confession to make: When I was first introduced to Thinking Maps around fifteen years ago, I was completely unimpressed. I dutifully hung them on my wall and promptly forgot all about them, except on the occasions when I needed to temporarily take them down to make room for art projects. I maintained this insouciance for many years.

In 2011, I was sent to the Write from the Beginning (The Thinking Maps-based writing program) training offered at the Hardy Center. I immediately found the logical, intuitive structure of the program captivating, and I began to suspect I had missed something important about the bland-looking graphic organizers on my wall. I lobbied my principal for more training on Thinking Maps, which eventually led to multiple visits to our school by an incredibly knowledgeable trainer named Kristin Clark. One of the first things Kristin did was explain the crucial role of The Meta-Cognitive Frames of Reference in the proper use of Thinking Maps, and I eventually came to realize that they were the secret ingredient that unlocked the true potential of the maps.

The Frames of Reference are a series of color-coded questions that students should always ask themselves about their Thinking Maps (or any other thinking/reading/writing they are doing). Each colored category (green, blue, and red) is a major question, which is then broken into six detailed supporting questions (See the Tree Map below). These questions, in their original form or as content-specific variations, can and should be layered onto Thinking Maps for students to answer before, during, or after they have done the required thinking.

As you can see in the above graphic, the three question categories are as follows:

Green: Where did you get the information in your map?

Blue: What is influencing the information in your map?

Red: What conclusions can you draw from your map?

All of these questions will help you address important learning targets and standards across the curriculum. In my next few blog posts, I will cover each one in detail. Let’s start with the Green Frame!

The Green Frame: Where did you get the information?

Anyone who has ever administered a performance task knows that this question can make or break a student’s response. If the student is supposed to use a series of sources provided in the task, but instead relies on their prior knowledge, they are finished before they begin. The Green Frame question teaches students to distinguish between two possibilities, posed in the form of supporting questions:

Is the information based on your prior knowledge?

or

Did the information come from a specific source?

Obviously, the goal should be for kids to contemplate these questions before they begin thinking, but even answering them after the fact can help them build awareness. It is, of course, possible that some of the information in their map could come from their prior knowledge while other information comes from a specific source; an example would be a map of inferences about a story in which the student combines text evidence and prior knowledge. 

Prior Knowledge

If the information in a student’s map is based on their prior knowledge, there are a couple of follow-up questions they can use to more specifically identify the type(s) of prior knowledge with which they are working:

What personal experience have you had with this concept or topic?

and/or

What background knowledge do you have that could relate to this concept or topic?

One of the many aspects of the frames that I love is how they encourage precision of thought. By differentiating between personal experience and background knowledge, these questions lead students to consider exactly where their knowledge comes from. Is this something that has happened to you, or did you learn about it second-hand? 

The prior knowledge side of the green frame can also be used in writing instruction. Personal experience and imaginative narratives rely heavily on a writer’s prior knowledge, as do the various types of “Explain Why” writing (opinion, point of view, argumentative). Matching genres to information sources can help students create mental templates which can come in handy when responding to writing prompts.

Specific Sources

The other side of the Green Frame is perfectly suited to all things Common Core. The guiding question is: Did the information come from a specific source? Our standards are awash with mentions of using and/or citing text evidence. The consistent use of the accompanying follow-up questions is a fantastic way to ensure you are regularly requiring students to employ these skills:

What are the specific titles, page numbers, web addresses of the sources you referenced?

and/or

What specific textual evidence can you cite to support your inferences?

Needless to say, the use and citation of text evidence are essential academic skills with applications throughout the curriculum. As I mentioned above, the CAASPP performance tasks usually involve the use of specific sources. Many types of expository writing prompts (to Explain Why, to Report Information, and to Explain How) often call for the use of text evidence, and there is even a research grade on our report cards.

Uses and Examples

The Green Frame of Reference has become part of my classroom curriculum. In other words, I teach it explicitly throughout the year and it is the inspiration for many mini-lessons. I have even gone so far as to use green font on the maps I create to designate any places where students should consider the source of their information (including the titles of sources, text evidence, etc). 

Focusing on the Green Frame affords a teacher the opportunity to address important standards in writing, grammar, punctuation, social studies, reading comprehension, and just about any other subject across the curriculum. Students can be taught to use personal examples such as anecdotes, personal experiences, and the experiences of others to support reasons in “Explain Why” writing. Verbs of attribution, along with other language used to acknowledge sources, can and should be taught in conjunction with the concept of citing text evidence. Direct and indirect quotes and their proper punctuation are also logical topics of instruction in this context. In the study of history, sources are everything; the Green Frame questions about citations look like they’ve been pulled from a history class syllabus.

My reading comprehension strategy and skill maps are often covered with green font. This is my way of constantly reinforcing the need to consider sources of information (See the “Dramatic Structure Summarizing Flow Map” for an example).

I have an entire wall of my room devoted to the Meta-Cognitive Frames of Reference. This serves two purposes. First, it ensures that I never forget to weave the Frames into my instruction. More importantly, it allows my students constant access to these critical tools. In my next post, I will address the Blue Frame, which is the most cognitively challenging and game-changing of the frames. Please help continue the conversation by including any questions or suggestions in the comment section below!

Here are the links to my other two posts about the Frames, along with one about the importance of Thinking Maps:

Blue Frame: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-meta-cognitive-frames-of-reference.html

Red Frame: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-meta-cognitive-frames-of-reference.html

What's So Great About Thinking Maps?: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2021/10/whats-so-great-about-thinking-maps.html

Writing Every Day,

Eric Lovein

PS: Check out my post about Summarizing Flow Maps!: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2022/03/thinking-maps-for-fictional-narrative.html

...and my video on Circle Maps!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQ9RkXXZcI

What's So Great About Thinking Maps?

My name is Eric, and I’m a nerd. My nerdiness is vast, but I would like to believe its most useful manifestation is in the area of pedagogy. When it comes to teaching, the question that is constantly in the back of my mind is some version of, “Is there a better way to do this?” And the answer, invariably, is something like, “Yes, yes there is. There is an infinitely better way to do this, but it is going to devour most of your mental and physical energy for the foreseeable future.” To which I frequently reply, “Sounds great!” 

Over the course of the past decade, I have become convinced that Thinking Maps, in all of their various forms, are the most effective way to improve my instruction across all areas of the curriculum. Here, in my first post, I lay out several reasons the use of Thinking Maps should be considered foundational to your planning and teaching.

Metacognitive Purpose

According to the book Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, there are three domains in which teachers can establish a purpose for a lesson: content (subject matter), language (key terms), and social (SEL skills). To these, I would add a fourth domain: metacognitive. I strongly believe that if we want to develop our students into intellectually autonomous thinkers and learners, we need to teach them to reflect on their thinking and learning. Without a solid familiarity with the structures of cognition, students are unlikely to notice or comprehend what their brains are doing. 

Thinking maps allow teachers to seamlessly build these structures of cognition into lessons on a consistent basis by providing logical, easily recognizable frameworks for thinking. The content purpose of a lesson might be to teach students to provide reasons for their points of view, but a Left-Sided Partial Multi-Flow Map helps them to see the causal relationship between reasons and opinions, satisfying a metacognitive goal as well. An accompanying Tree Map makes clear that reasons need to be clarified and/or elaborated. A bank of words embedded in the map reminds students there is a set of terms associated with this type of thinking, and a well placed Blue Frame of Reference question (more on this in my next post), at the bottom of the map, can remind students to consider their biases when formulating an opinion and/or make a connection between opinion writing and the “Evaluate” level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Making Thinking Visible

I have determined that there are two main categories of Thinking Maps. The first is the student-generated map with which you are most likely familiar. This is the sort of map you ask students to create in order to plan a piece of writing or show their understanding of a particular lesson. The beauty of this sort of map is that it can show the teacher exactly what a student was thinking and how well they understood the task. A quick glance at a student-generated map usually allows a teacher to discern whether a student is on the right track. Did they put adjectives and adjective phrases in the bubbles on a Bubble Map or similarities in the central bubbles of a Double Bubble Map?

The second category of map is what I refer to as a “response map.” This kind of map permits me to show students what I am thinking. An example of this is a “Backstory Tree Map” I created for Literature Circles. As it happens, there are five techniques with which an author can provide backstory in a narrative. I made a Tree Map with five “branches,” one for each technique, and wrote hints on how to identify each technique on the lines below (on a digital version that could be written over or printed as directions). It was then up to the students to identify instances of backstory in their Literature Circle books and classify them appropriately on their Tree Maps. This map achieved the content purpose of helping students learn the five backstory techniques, but it also drove home the metacognitive point that the techniques should be considered distinct categories. 

Flexibility

Another of the many reasons I believe Thinking Maps should be foundational to your planning and teaching is their infinite flexibility. By this I mean that they can be used with any lesson, in any subject, at any ability level, throughout the teaching day. If your ELA, social studies, or science textbook requires students to complete a random, poorly designed graphic organizer, you can easily convert said graphic organizer into a Thinking Map. This might seem like an unnecessary bit of extra effort on your part, but it will allow students to connect the assignment to familiar modes of thinking, bringing down their affective filters and allowing them to focus on the content purpose of the activity. It also gives you the opportunity to raise or lower the rigor of the assignment using the techniques discussed in the next and final section.

Rigor

The best argument for making Thinking Maps integral to your instruction is the control they give you over the rigor of a lesson/assignment. You can easily build as much or as little scaffolding into a map as you deem necessary. 

One way you can do this is by raising or lowering the level of strategic thinking through your map selection. For example, I use three different maps for making text-to-self connections. The first, a Circle Map with a Frame of Reference, allows a student to connect any character in a story to any person in their life. Each connection can be about a different character and/or person, so it is very open-ended. The second map, a Double Bubble Map with only similarity bubbles, forces the student to make much deeper and more numerous connections since they have to choose one character and compare her/him to just one person in their life. The most rigorous text-to-self connections map I have created is actually a series of Bridge Maps which requires the student to make analogical connections, indirect connections which need to be explained in detail. With these three maps at my disposal, the same reading strategy can be practiced with significantly different levels of rigor.

In addition to map selection, you can adjust the rigor of an assignment by embedding more or less scaffolding in the boxes or bubbles of the map (see the above example of the Backstory Map).

Questions from the Metacognitive Frames of Reference are another way to raise rigor, but, since they will be the subject of my next blog post, I will refrain from discussing them until then. For now, I strongly suggest experimenting with using Thinking Maps as often as possible. I think you will find your comfort level will quickly improve. Hopefully, you will have a lot of questions for me in the comment section below!

Writing Every Day,

Eric Lovein

PS: Check out my post about Summarizing Flow Maps!: https://spotlightclassrooms.blogspot.com/2022/03/thinking-maps-for-fictional-narrative.html

...and my video on Circle Maps!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQ9RkXXZcI