Thinking Tools in K-12 School

Thinking tools (Graphic organizers) spread rapidly in Japanese schools. Those are tools to visualize and share ideas and think collaboratively. Thinking requires a degree of constraints. Thinking tools can provide the constraints through graphics and viewpoints on them. When using thinking tools, it is important to know about thinking skills. Each thinking skill has a sequence of complexity from lower year of elementary school to senior school. Matching thinking skills and thinking tools makes visualize the procedure of thinking. However, the correspondence depends on situation, topics and purpose of using thinking tools.