The Picture Me Thinking Model
Structure for integrating inquiry, argumentation, and essay writing.
A 4-session, 2-hour Professional Development Course for Secondary Academic Educators.
View a 3-minute video at the School Administrator Site
On-Site Online Educator Training
Picture Me Thinking is a 2-hour online video course that demonstrates how to use the PMT Model to frame inquiry-to-writing instruction. Designed for grade 5-12 academic educators.
Revolutionary Inquiry Tools
The Picture Me Thinking Model serves as a graphic/verbal map that facilitates the cognitive strategies used for inquiry and writing by professional researchers across disciplines.
Powerful Writing Outcomes
The PMT Model makes the parallel paths of inquiry and writing transparent. The Model helps students translate inquiry problems and solutions into argument outlines for essays.
Thinking is a Pre-Skill for Inquiry and Writing
Research shows that blending inquiry-based instruction and argumentative writing instruction is the best method for advancing students' writing skills because reasoning is modeled and refined during the inquiry dialogue. (Miller, Scott & McTigue, 2018, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1170233).
The PMT Model provides consistent and transparent structure that drives the inquiry dialogue toward higher order thinking and collaborative problem solving, in connection with instruction on disciplinary core concepts.
The PMT Course includes video demonstrations of how teachers use the Model to facilitate the inquiry dialogue in language arts, science, and social studies.
The PMT Lesson Planning Template prepares teachers to integrate ELA research and essay writing standards into investigations into disciplinary ideas and phenomena. Student and teacher reflective assessments are included.
Professional Learning Communities use the PMT tools to plan interdisciplinary instruction and provide peer coaching.
The PMT Model makes inquiry explicit!" Linda Darling Hammond, Ph.D., Stanford GSE, Founder of SCOPE.
"The PMT Model makes it easy to use multi-media content to engage students in learning!" Urban Ed. Professor J. Mahiri, Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley GSE.
The Picture Me Thinking Model
"The DNA of the Inquiry-to-Writing Process"
The PMT Model provides structure for inquiry-to-writing instruction; including concept-based, phenomena-anchored, model-driven, and argument-driven inquiry.
The Model functions as a graphic/verbal map for the inquiry-to-writing process. Graphic organizers serve as both symbols and tools for core cognitive strategies. Each strategy has specific thinking scripts and vocabulary.
Equity, Inclusion, and Differentiated Instruction
Students who read below grade level need reasoning skills broken out of reading instruction and taught explicitly. Well- structured inquiry-based instruction meets this need by providing models of reasoning in a social context. The inquiry dialogue naturally differentiates instruction because the students' ideas are the focus of the conversation.
It's so easy to give it a try!
Time-efficient and affordable at $11 per level or $44 for the full course!
Take one 30-minute level at a time or use the full course to form a professional learning community.
The four-level PMT Course will be in your library for 18 months, so you can review any level at anytime!
