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THINKING SKILLS

Situation

You want to improve the quality of thinking among your pupils. And you’ve probably already adopted several strategies for this in your practice. Successfully so. But don’t you find that, when left to their own devices, your pupils sometimes revert to:

  • - Responding impulsively and thoughtlessly
  • - Approaching information passively, not questioning or analysing
  • - Failing to organise their ideas meaningfully
  • - Dealing with problem solving in a haphazard way
  • - Working away furiously without reflecting on method or accuracy
  • - Confusing minor details with major themes
  • - Missing opportunities to make cross connections
  • - Forgetting to use the skills they’d learned before
  • - Giving up all too easily?

 

Solution 

Using visual tools gets to the source of these poor thinking habits. How? By addressing the problem further upstream than conventional approaches. And by making that process tangible and visible, your pupils can work directly on improving their thinking. Using visual tools embeds the essentials of successful thinking:

  • Focus: visual tools capture attention for sustained thinking
  • Method: using visual tools teaches practical and reliable methods to organise thoughts, the litmus test of successful thinking 

For this reason, visual tools can be used to enhance all your other thinking strategies. And transfer across the curriculum.

 

Benefits 

When you use visual tools as part and parcel of your strategies to improve the quality of your pupils’ thinking, you can expect to see your pupils:

  • - Generating ideas freely and systematically
  • - Organising their ideas into meaningful connections
  • - Breaking down topics into their smaller parts
  • - Creating connections both within and across topics
  • - Making links between current and past learning
  • - Controlling impulsive habits by following familiar methods
  • - Reflecting on their thinking as it happens, not just in the plenary
  • - Asking questions about others’ thinking in order to develop their own understanding
  • - Probing beyond surface descriptions for deeper patterns of meaning

- Providing reasons for their views and conclusions

 

Experience 

We work with authorities right across the UK in the area of thinking skills. Every year since 2004 Model Learning has worked with the Clacton-on-Sea Excellence Cluster, providing training for schools and key individuals in using visual tools to extend best practice in the development of thinking skills. We have worked with key staff in Stoke for the last two years building their capacity to develop others in this area. The Highlands Authority in Scotland, during 2007, used Model Learning to accelerate the development of their thinking skills initiative among their schools.

 

Links 

Click on the following to read about the benefits of using visual tools in... Learn to Learn, Emotional Intelligence.