Peel The Fruit Slides Activity

UPDATE 10/13/2020: Here are links to some more Thinking Routine activities I made on Google Slides: 3-2-1 Bridge and Step Inside Monster Box.

I am a gigantic fan of Harvard’s Project Zero Thinking Routines. As distance learning has become a necessity for many teachers and students, I have been pondering what these routines might look like when conducting virtual discussions. I was in the middle of designing an interactive Google Slides presentations for one of my favorite routines, “Peel the Fruit,” when I saw a tweet from Dr. Catlin Tucker sharing some slides that she had made for Thinking Routines. Fortunately, my work was not a duplicate, as her slides are for 5 other great routines!

For my “Peel the Fruit” presentation, I linked the source I’ve adapted it from in the first slide. You can also see some other important links on this blog post. The 2nd slide in this presentation was actually designed on a Master Slide so that students don’t inadvertently change it. The slide has links to each of the student slides, so that when it is time to discuss, the teacher can click back and forth from each “layer” of the fruit. The home button on each student slide brings you back to the original diagram.

I envision that once a class has begun to study a topic, the teacher can assign students to begin on different slides, typing their comments in the tables. They can move onto a different slide once they have commented. If you need new slides, I would add them to the end, or else your hyperlinks will need to be changed. Once students have added their thoughts, the teacher can discuss with the whole class, and go over the reflection at the end of the slide show.

If you have not used this Thinking Routine before, you can see videos of it in action with a 4th grade class here. (Scroll down.)

To make a copy of my Peel the Fruit presentation for your own use, click here.