Visible Thinking Routine
Compass Points.
Excitements · Worries · Needs · Stance — for evaluating an idea.
What is it
What is Compass Points?
Decision-support routine. E/W/N/S quadrants surface stakeholder reactions to a proposition.
Setup: What is the idea or proposition under consideration?.
How it works
The prompts
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01
E — Excitements: what's the upside?
Response: Longtext · bucket: E
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02
W — Worries: what's the downside?
Response: Longtext · bucket: W
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03
N — Needs: what else do you need to know?
Response: Longtext · bucket: N
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04
S — Stance / Steps / Suggestions: where do you land?
Response: Longtext · bucket: S
When to use
Good moments for Compass Points
- Classroom warm-up. Surface what students bring before introducing new content.
- After a reading or video. Consolidate big ideas without testing recall.
- Discussion starter. Responses become the seed material for the room conversation.
- End-of-session reflection. Capture how thinking changed.
Keep exploring
Other thinking routines
Browse all 21 routines in the gallery, filtered by the kind of thinking you want to surface — observation, perspective-taking, reasoning with evidence, or capturing the heart of an idea.