Zoom In
Zoom In is a thinking routine from Harvard's Project Zero in which students interpret an image one fragment at a time, so that ideas have to be built from evidence rather than instant recognition. In any subject, choose an image that rewards slow looking — a primary source, a diagram, an artwork, a photograph, a map, a data visualisation — frame up to five sections, and ask students what they notice, what they think it might be, and what makes them say so. As each new section is revealed the questions shift to whether their thinking has changed and why, and the final whole image turns the sequence into a conversation about how interpretations get revised in the light of new evidence.
Inspired by the Zoom In thinking routine developed through Project Zero's Visible Thinking framework. This implementation was informed by the Thinking Pathways Zoom In resource (https://thinkingpathwayz.weebly.com/zoomin.html). Licensed and adapted in accordance with CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.