Visible Thinking Routine
What Makes You Say That?.
Pair an interpretation with the reasoning behind it.
N_prompt pattern
reason
interpret
What is it
What is What Makes You Say That??
Reasoning-with-evidence routine. Often paired with another routine that produces a claim.
Setup: What statement or interpretation are we examining?.
How it works
The prompts
-
01
What's your interpretation?
Response: Longtext
-
02
What makes you say that?
Cite what you saw, heard, read, or know.
Response: Longtext
When to use
Good moments for What Makes You Say That?
- 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.