Project Zero

When you’re trying to move beyond worksheets into true critical thinking, Harvard’s Project Zero offers frameworks rather than pre-made lessons. This long-running research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education develops “thinking routines,” projects, and publications that help learners make their thinking visible across subjects. Originally designed for classrooms and museums, these routines—like “See, Think, Wonder” or “Claim, Support, Question”—translate beautifully to homeschools and co-ops. Parents appreciate that they can use the same simple prompts with a picture book, a science demo, or a historical document, building habits of observation and reasoning over time. Most of Project Zero’s core resources are freely available online, making them a high-value addition to any approach. The website can feel academic and jargon-heavy at first, so we suggest starting with a short list of thinking routines and trying them out with real work before diving into the research papers.