ITET: Promoting thinking skills

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ITET Promoting thinking skills
Education for Global Citizenship and
Sustainable Development
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Why thinking/inquiry skills?

• It will raise standards
• Considerable research evidence to support this
  claim
• We have been too concerned with knowledge and
  neglected skills, attitudes and values.
• Preparing children for the 21stC they need
  information processing skills.

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Why do we do it?

• Learn to think..
• .Think to learn

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Recommendations from Daugherty

• A profile of learning skills should form a new
  element in the statutory reporting of attainment
  at Key Stage 2 (Year 5)
• Skills tests in literacy, numeracy and problem
  solving
• Marked by external agency

• Skills to be mapped against attainment targets in
  the core and non-core subjects.
• Statutory teacher assessment in the core subjects
  (yr 6)
• Clusters of primary moderated with secondary
  colleagues

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What are the benefits?

• A reliable thinking skills programme would do
  more than enable children to deal effectively
  with immediate cognitive tasks, such as problems
  to be solved the aim of a thinking skills
  programme is to help them become more
  thoughtful, more reflective, more considerate and
  more reliable individuals.
• Mathew Lipman (Philosophy for Children)

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What are Thinking Skills?What are Inquiry Skills?

• Work in pairs
• Draw two columns on a blank sheet of paper
• Column 1 Inquiry Skills
• Column 2 Thinking Skills
• Brainstorm the words you associate with inquiry
  and thinking

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Thinking and Inquiry

• Inquiry
• The Who, What, Where, When, How, Should, Could,
  of inquiry.
• Thinking
• The tools we use to help us think, for example
  taxonomies of thinking.

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Thinking Skills Approaches

• Subject-based programmes, e.g.
• Lets Think (a science-based programme for KS1)
• CAME (Cognitive acceleration in Maths Education)
• CASE (Cognitive acceleration in Science
  Education)
• Thinking Skills Programmes, e.g.
• Philosophy for Children (P4C) (a community of
  enquiry approach)
• DeBonos thinking Hats

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Science for All

• Science, mathematics, and technology are
  defined as much by what they do and how they do
  it as they are by the results they achieve. To
  understand them as ways of thinking and doing, as
  well as bodies of knowledge, requires that
  students have some experience with the kinds of
  thought and action that are typical of those
  fields.

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An Inquiry Approach

• Subject-based
• The subject disciplines are the most powerful
  tools we have for investigating the world.
• Each subject has its own inquiry skills that
  shape the way they look at the world.
• Children need to learn how to think like a
  scientist, think like an artist, think like
  an historian and so on.

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Cross curricular approaches

• ACTS (Activating Thinking Skills)
• (Carol McGuinness)
• Fuerensteins Enrichment
• Brain-based learning
• Accelerated Learning
• Learning styles
• Multiple Intelligences

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Examples of thinking skills

• Labelling, matching
• Sorting, ordering, ranking
• Analysing part/whole relationships
• Making predictions/hypothesising
• Drawing conclusions, giving reasons
• Distinguishing fact from opinion
• Determining bias, checking the validity of
  evidence

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Thinking skills through ESDGC

• Making predictions/
• hypothesising
• Drawing conclusions, giving reasons
• Distinguishing fact from opinion
• Determining bias, checking the validity of
  evidence

• All of these thinking skills can be promoted
  through
• Future of the rainforests (KS2/3).
• Threats to Gashaka
• (KS2/3)

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Thinking skills

• Looking for similarities and differences/
  comparing/contrasting
• Relating cause and effect designing a fair test
• Generating new ideas brainstorming
• Problem-solving thinking up different solutions
  and testing them
• Planning
• Making decisions, weighing up pros and cons

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Card sorting activities

• Card sorting activities are an excellent way to
  promote a range of thinking skills
• Activities
• Choose from
• For and against big dams (KS40
• Cause and effect of acid rain (KS3)
• Life in Gashaka (KS2)
• Use of the forests (KS4).

• Looking for similarities and differences
• Comparing and contrasting
• Relating cause and effect

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Mysteries can be used to promote all the
following thinking skills

• Labelling, matching
• Sorting, ordering, ranking
• Analysing part/whole relationships
• Making predictions/hypothesising
• Drawing conclusions, giving reasons
• Distinguishing fact from opinion
• Determining bias, checking the validity of
  evidence

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Solve the Mystery

• Work in pairs
• Why is Graces Mum sad?
• Use the thinking tool to sort out the
  relationships and solve the mystery
• How many thinking skills did you use?

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Thinking Strategies Mysteries

• Mysteries are a powerful strategy they can
  transform the teaching and learning process.
• Mysteries explore cause and effect, and the
  concept of classification underpins the mystery
  solving strategies.
• Can be applied in RE, English, History,
  Geography, PSE.

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Infusion throughout the curriculum

• To infuse
• to introduce into one thing, a second thing
  which gives it extra life, vigour and
  significance.

Content Thinking Skill Designing a Lesson
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Thinking Frames

• ACTs has designed a range of thinking frames to
  aid the kinds of thinking needed in ESDGC
• Decision making
• Enquiry
• Comparing and contrasting
• Choosing considering options
• Drawing conclusions giving reasons

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Designing an infusion lesson for ESDGC

• Challenging task
• What kind of thinking will you focus on?
• What kind of talk will go on?
• What teacher questioning?
• How will pupils be organised?

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Thinking Skills Lessons

• provide explicit strategies for pupils
• build in reflection time for evaluation
• use active thinking tasks that absorb the learner
• are relevant to pupils lives
• teachers model good thinking
• pupils feel safe to explore their thinking

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Teacher Evaluations ACTS Project- Benefits

• Childrens thinking
• Better reasoning power
• Increased creativity, tackling novel problems
• Able to clarify and structure thinking
• See links between curriculum areas
• More active participation
• Increased confidence

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Teacher Evaluation ACTS Project Benefits

• Changes in classroom interaction
• Increased interaction
• Group work more structured
• Children expect to be pushed
• Thinking vocabulary increased
• More enjoyable

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Teacher Evaluation ACTS Project Benefits

• Teachers professional development
• Sharpened their own thinking about thinking
• More effective planning
• Expectations raised
• More challenging
• Better questioning strategies

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Teacher Evaluations ACTS Project - Difficulties

• Time was the main constraint
• Lessons needed more planning at least initially
• Poor knowledge base about thinking skills
• Allowing time for thinking
• Absence of vocabulary for talking about thinking
• Despite initial concerns did fit with the
  demands of the curriculum

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Common Themes and Practices

• Thinking is a social activity therefore
  participatory pair and group work is crucial.
• Discussion skills form the basis of thinking.
• Pupils need time to think and discuss.
• Reflection on thinking strategies metacognition
  is essential.
• Graphic organizers and thinking frames can
  scaffold the promotion of thinking skills.
• Teachers are facilitators of learning.

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Speaking, listening and thinking

• perhaps the most important reason for
  developing childrens oral language is that all
  learning depends on the ability to question,
  reason, formulate ideas, pose hypothesis and
  exchange ideas with others. These are not just
  oral skills, they are thinking skill.
• A. Browne (19967)