Adopted from Deborah Meier's Five Habits of Mind, from her book, The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem, I created SPECS, an acronym that stands for:

• Significance

• Perspective

• Evidence

• Connection, and

• Supposition

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The acronym, I think, works on a couple levels:

1. It contains a framework that encourages kids to think about the way they think by considering the answers to the five sets of questions listed to the right.

2. But also, SPECS can be a colloquial abbreviation for:

   • spectacles - an item through which you look in order to see the world more clearly, and...​

   • specifications - a detailed description of the design and materials that go into a particular piece of work - In this case, thinking. When asking students to think about their thinking, I will often ask them "What are the SPECS?"