Visible Thinking Routine
Step Inside.
Take on the viewpoint of a person or object inside the situation.
What is it
What is Step Inside?
Each participant picks (or is assigned) a person/object connected to the situation and answers from their viewpoint.
Setup: Describe the event or situation.
How it works
The prompts
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01
Whose viewpoint are you taking?
Response: Text
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02
What can this person or thing see, observe, or notice?
Response: Longtext
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03
What might they know, understand, or believe?
Response: Longtext
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04
What might they care deeply about?
Response: Longtext
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05
What might they wonder about or question?
Response: Longtext
When to use
Good moments for Step Inside
- 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.