Lets Think

1
Lets Think

• Early Years

2
Aims of the Session

• Give background understanding
• Opportunity to look in detail at the materials
• Outline the advantages
• Encourage their use
• Offer support

3
Activity

• Decide on the most wonderful thing that has
  happened to you since Christmas
• As a group, decide whose experience is the
  bestand why

4
Activity

• As a group, consider what are your main aims in
  the education of Early Years children
• In the light of this, what should a well-educated
  child look like
• At 5?
• At 12?

5
Background Thinking

• Piaget
• Stages of development
• Windows of opportunity
• Cognitive Acceleration
• Vygotskii
• Learning through collaboration
• Zone of proximal development

6
Overview of all

• Available throughout School life
• Research
• Common framework
• Schema (one schemata)

7
Early Years

• Groups of four children
• When ready
• 15 activities based on
• Classification
• Seriation
• Causality
• (Activity)

8
Important!

• First hand experience
• Further opportunity to investigate
• Not teaching content the only objective is
  thinking
• Activities to be introduced in order

9
5 Pillars of Cognitive Acceleration

• Concrete Preparation
• Cognitive Challenge / Conflict
• Social Construction
• Bridging
• Metacognition

10
Concrete Preparation

• Vocabulary
• Setting ground rules

11
Social Construction

• Learning to collaborate
• Expressing viewpoints
• Giving reasons
• Active Listening
• Everyone participating
• Working together

12
Cognitive Challenge

• Something beyond what they can do alone
• Stretching the mind
• Allowing uncomfortable moments

13
Bridging

• to real life
• to other areas of school or home life
• how could we use this?
• Throughout the session

14
Metacognition

• Reflecting on learning
• What made this difficult?
• Did anything make it easier?
• How did you think of that?
• Did you change your mind?
• Why?

15
Role of the Adult/Facilitator

• Ensuring the ground rules are established
• Ensuring everyone has an input
• Asking leading questions when necessary
• Leading on bridging and metacognition

16
Objective - Thinking

• Advantages
• Speaking and Listening
• Explicit rules for collaboration
• Sharing
• Verbalising learning
• Reasonableness

17
Comparisons

• What about this pedagogy is the same as what you
  aim for now?
• What is different?

18
SWOT

• What are the successes, weaknesses, opportunities
  and threats to this?
• How can we support you?

19
Impact

• How can you disseminate this information to make
  the biggest impact?
• Whose support will you need?

20
Costs

• 95 for the resource pack including teachers
  manual
• 50 for the teachers manual alone
• joy.blaker_at_rotherham.gov.uk