Visible Thinking Routine
Headlines.
Write a one-line headline that captures the heart of an idea.
N_prompt pattern
conclude
What is it
What is Headlines?
Distilling routine. One sentence, one big idea, capture-the-essence framing.
Setup: What topic should the headline summarize?.
How it works
The prompts
-
01
Your headline
One sentence. Capture what feels most important.
Response: Text
When to use
Good moments for Headlines
- 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.