All thinking routines

Visible Thinking Routine

Zoom In.

Reveal an image gradually; respond at each stage.

Staged pattern observe interpret wonder complexity

What is it

What is Zoom In?

Author uploads an ordered set of frames (cropped/masked progressively). Host advances the reveal; participants describe what they see, hypothesise, and update their thinking.

Setup: Upload 3–5 ordered frames (each shows more of the image).

How it works

The prompts

  1. 01

    What do you see or notice now?

    Response: Longtext

  2. 02

    What's your hypothesis or interpretation?

    Response: Longtext

  3. 03

    What new things are you wondering about?

    Response: Longtext

When to use

Good moments for Zoom In

  • 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.