Making Learning Visible
Visible Learners: A progressive, research-based approach for making learning visible
(from the Making Learning Visible website)Based on the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, Visible Learners highlights learning through interpreting objects and artifacts, group learning, and documentation to make students' learning evident to teachers. Visible classrooms are committed to five key principles: Learning is purposeful, social, emotional, empowering, and representational. The book includes visual essays, key practices, classroom and examples:
- Show how to make learning happen in relation to others, spark emotional connections, give students power over their learning, and express ideas in multiple ways
- Illustrate Reggio-inspired principles and approaches via quotes, photos, student and teacher reflections, and examples of student work
- Offer a new way to enhance learning using progressive, research-based practices for increasing collaboration and critical thinking in and outside the classroom
- Visible Learners asks that teachers look beyond surface-level to understand who students are, what they come to know, and how they come to know it.
Welcome to the Making Learning Visible Resources Weebly! This site provides resources and tools to support learning in groups in the classroom and the staffroom. Most of the tools you will find here are intended for teachers, professional development designers and coaches, and administrators, though some are also designed to help families support student learning. Many also include ways to involve students more directly in teaching and learning decisions. Almost all of the tools emphasize greater intentionality combined with careful looking and listening. Making learning visible is not a recipe; it will take time to discover and adapt the tools and resources for your own setting. We hope you will find this site useful and enjoy exploring it. The site includes five kinds of tools and resources:
1. Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom
2. Supporting Learning in Groups in the Staffroom
3. Documenting Individual and Group Learning
4. Engaging Families in Supporting Student Learning
5. Making Learning Visible Beyond the Classroom
Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom includes practical tools with suggestions for creating learning groups at the beginning of the school year, forming study groups in classrooms, and promoting a culture of dialogue. provides tools for forming adult study groups, hands-on activities for adults to explore learning groups and documentation for themselves, and conversation structures for discussing and reflecting on student learning.
Supporting Learning in Groups in the Staffroom provides tools for forming adult study groups, hands-on activities for adults to explore learning groups and documentation for themselves, and conversation structures for discussing and reflecting on student learning.
Documenting Individual and Group Learning includes resources for understanding, creating, and sharing documentation with students and colleagues. Some tools will help you think through the purpose of your documentation; others provide guidelines for gathering or sharing documentation via video, computer, photographs, or powerpoint.
Engaging Families in Supporting Student Learning offers resources to inform families about visible learning, involve families in supporting their children’s learning, and communicate with families about learning. Tools range from a refrigerator reminder to guidelines for parents interested in forming their own study group.
Making Learning Visible beyond the Classroom provides tools and templates for creating bulletin boards, documentation panels, visual essays, and schoolwide exhibitions that make learning and learners visible, with examples from preschool-high school.
