Students hand their thinking to AI when nobody asks them to notice it. Pick one kind of thinking, plan a unit around it with any AI tool, and give students one ladder to check every answer against.
One kind of thinking, one unit. A plan in about 30 minutes, two minutes of self-check after each task.
Thinking Profile helps you plan a whole unit around one kind of thinking, so students practise it in four to six tasks and can see for themselves that they are getting better.
A single task shows that students can do their own thinking with AI in the room. A whole unit shows them that they are getting better at it: they meet the same ladder four to six times and watch themselves climb.
How you might retell it to a colleague:
I followed Causes and systems through our ecosystems unit, and my students climbed from step 1 to step 3.
Each ladder has four steps. Every step names something students can point to in their own answer, so they can check themselves honestly. Pick the one that fits your unit.
Producing many and unusual options.
The four steps
Trained by: Many ways
Plan with this ladder
Weighing evidence, testing claims and deciding.
The four steps
Trained by: Pick and justify, Check the claim, Argue it, Flawed Answer
Plan with this ladder
Seeing the structure one case shares with another.
The four steps
Trained by: Like what?, Side by Side
Plan with this ladder
Finding the best explanation and rebuilding from what is certainly true.
The four steps
Trained by: Best explanation, Strip it down, Estimate it, Model it
Plan with this ladder
Chains, loops and side effects.
The four steps
Trained by: Then what?, Map the loop
Plan with this ladder
Watching and adjusting how you think. It makes every other cluster sharper.
The four steps
Trained by: Think back
Plan with this ladderDo not include student names or student work in this conversation. The prompt only needs your cluster, subject, grade, number of weeks and topic.
Choose a cluster and fill in subject and topic to see your prompt.
CopiedThe ladder is for students' own self-check. It is never graded. In the next unit you can follow the same cluster again or pick another one.
One question runs through the unit: when one thing in an ecosystem changes, what else changes, and when? Each week students follow the effects a little further: a chain in week 1, a loop in week 2, a delayed side effect in week 3, and by week 6 a prediction they back with the loop.
Week 1 · Then what? · room for step 2
Queensland, 1935: cane toads are released to eat the beetles that damage sugar cane. Students write the first consequence, the consequence of that, and one more.
Week 2 · Map the loop · room for step 3
Students draw how snowshoe hares, lynx and the shrubs the hares eat affect each other, find one loop and say whether it grows or balances itself.
Week 3 · Then what? · room for step 3
Harder inputs: a farmer spreads extra fertiliser next to a lake. Students follow the chain into the water and find the delayed side effect: algae bloom, die and rot, and the fish run short of oxygen.
Week 4 · Best explanation · room for step 3
Borrowed from Explaining. 29 reindeer released on St. Matthew Island in 1944 grew to about 6,000 by 1963, then fell to 42 by 1966. Students propose explanations and say what evidence would tell them apart. Researchers still disagree: overgrazed lichen plus a hard winter, or the winter alone.
Week 5 · Side by Side: One thing changed · room for step 4
Borrowed from Comparing. Two identical forests have too many deer, and both remove the same number every year. In A most of the deer removed are females, in B most are males. Students compare what happens, write the rule and predict a third forest.
Week 6 · Map the loop · room for step 4
Back to the hares, now with less support: a disease halves the lynx. Students use their loop to predict what happens to hares and shrubs over the next few years, and say how sure they are.
For six weeks we practise one kind of thinking: causes and systems. After every task you check your answer against the same four-step ladder, point to the words that show your step, and write your next step. Nobody grades the ladder. It is there so you can see yourself climb.
Fictional examples: two Grade 8 answers to the week 4 task, each with the student's own self-check.
There were no wolves on the island, so nothing killed the reindeer and there got to be too many. They ate all the lichen, so there was no food left, so they starved. Maybe some of them also got a disease.
More reindeer ate more lichen, and less lichen meant less food for the reindeer, so it is a loop. But lichen grows back really slowly, so the herd kept growing for years after the food started running out. Then one very bad winter with deep snow finished them off. If it was only the winter, they would have been fat and healthy in 1963. If it was the food, they would already be getting thinner. Weighing the reindeer from before the crash would tell us which.
Labels rate the research on teaching this kind of thinking regularly, not a single five-minute move. One move is one small piece of that practice.
The ladders are Choosewise's own, built on the logic of the SOLO taxonomy. They have not been tested in research.
These labels rate the research on practising a kind of thinking regularly and checking it against clear criteria, not a single use. For research on many other teaching strategies, see the Evidence Toolkit on this site.
You use AI to plan the unit. Your students do not need to. If students use AI themselves in a task, these rules apply (October 2026):
Rules differ between countries and change often. Check your own national rules and your school policy before students use any AI tool.
The ladder deck has all six ladders on cards for the wall or the desk. The self-check sheets let students rate each task and write their next step, and show you the movement over the unit.