Classrooms that Cultivate Deep Thinking

Let's examine a classroom where students are challenged to make their thinking visible.  What would that look like?  Isn't this an environment where students have the opportunities to collaborate with a partner based on intentional and practiced opportunities to listen and share, comfortably, with mutual respect for one another's thoughts, opinions, and experiences.  Now, take that concept a step further where the students have the chance to examine a Biblical passage and the opportunity to see how God's word applies to the central theme, a character's actions, or the choices that lead to historical events in the overall timeline of our lives and the lives of people of the past.  What does this look like within the classroom?  Students make connections to world events, personal events, things they have read, and to God's Word.  Why not challenge students to write about those connections to their reading passages or their science and mathematics experiments and work.  Do your students keep interactive journals for core subjects?  What do these look like, and how do they integrate God's Word with their discoveries and notations at the end of the day?  I will be including samples of students' work, and I look forward to hearing what this looks like in your classrooms!  Please share!