WP_Query Object ( [query] => Array ( [category_name] => uncategorised ) [query_vars] => Array ( [category_name] => uncategorised [error] => [m] => [p] => 0 [post_parent] => [subpost] => [subpost_id] => [attachment] => [attachment_id] => 0 [name] => [pagename] => [page_id] => 0 [second] => [minute] => [hour] => [day] => 0 [monthnum] => 0 [year] => 0 [w] => 0 [tag] => [cat] => 1 [tag_id] => [author] => [author_name] => [feed] => [tb] => [paged] => 0 [meta_key] => [meta_value] => [preview] => [s] => [sentence] => [title] => [fields] => [menu_order] => [embed] => [category__in] => Array ( ) [category__not_in] => Array ( ) [category__and] => Array ( ) [post__in] => Array ( ) [post__not_in] => Array ( ) [post_name__in] => Array ( ) [tag__in] => Array ( ) [tag__not_in] => Array ( ) [tag__and] => Array ( ) [tag_slug__in] => Array ( ) [tag_slug__and] => Array ( ) [post_parent__in] => Array ( ) [post_parent__not_in] => Array ( ) [author__in] => Array ( ) [author__not_in] => Array ( ) [search_columns] => Array ( ) [ignore_sticky_posts] => [suppress_filters] => [cache_results] => 1 [update_post_term_cache] => 1 [update_menu_item_cache] => [lazy_load_term_meta] => 1 [update_post_meta_cache] => 1 [post_type] => [posts_per_page] => 10 [nopaging] => [comments_per_page] => 50 [no_found_rows] => [order] => DESC ) [tax_query] => WP_Tax_Query Object ( [queries] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [taxonomy] => category [terms] => Array ( [0] => uncategorised ) [field] => slug [operator] => IN [include_children] => 1 ) ) [relation] => AND [table_aliases:protected] => Array ( [0] => wp_term_relationships ) [queried_terms] => Array ( [category] => Array ( [terms] => Array ( [0] => uncategorised ) [field] => slug ) ) [primary_table] => wp_posts [primary_id_column] => ID ) [meta_query] => WP_Meta_Query Object ( [queries] => Array ( ) [relation] => [meta_table] => [meta_id_column] => [primary_table] => [primary_id_column] => [table_aliases:protected] => Array ( ) [clauses:protected] => Array ( ) [has_or_relation:protected] => ) [date_query] => [queried_object] => WP_Term Object ( [term_id] => 1 [name] => Uncategorised [slug] => uncategorised [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 1 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 73 [filter] => raw [cat_ID] => 1 [category_count] => 73 [category_description] => [cat_name] => Uncategorised [category_nicename] => uncategorised [category_parent] => 0 ) [queried_object_id] => 1 [request] => SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id) WHERE 1=1 AND ( wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id IN (1) ) AND ((wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND (wp_posts.post_status = 'publish'))) GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 10 [posts] => Array ( [0] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1545 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_date_gmt] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_content] => What does a professional development model for Let’s Think look like that seeks to effect whole school change and build internal capacity?  I have spent the last two terms considering this problem as I work with a primary school in West Wales to support them in embedding the Let’s Think Maths approach across their school. My thought process began by considering the challenges of whole school implementation: what makes it tricky, and why does it often take so long?  I identified three key challenges.

1. School budgets are tight. I can only spend three two day sessions at the school across the academic year (six days in total), and only a small handful of teachers can be released to work with me on those six days.
2. One of the challenges of Let’s Think Maths in the primary years is that teachers do not feel confident about their own mathematics knowledge and understanding.  This means that they tend to only teach the lessons that they have seen a tutor like me modelling and explaining.  This can leave them with a very small repertoire of lessons, given the professional development time I have with them.
3. Teachers only really feel confident with a lesson when they have taught it twice, but in the primary years, teachers tend to only teach their own class.  This means they may not develop confidence in a lesson until they teach it for the second time, the following year.

These challenges led me to consider reframing the way I think about the teachers who do attend the professional development sessions I led.  What if I am not simply preparing them to teach Let’s Think in their own classes, but also to teach Let’s Think to other teachers in the school?  To this end, teachers from different year groups were identified to take part.  The school was asked to find the time to enable these teachers to not only teach these lessons to their own classes, but to team teach each lesson with a partner teacher. This latter activity also resolved the issue of teachers taking two years to feel confident teaching a lesson: now each lesson would be taught twice in the same year, leading (hopefully) to a quicker and more confident understanding of the lessons and the approach. This approach means the teachers identified to take part in the face-to-face professional development sessions need to be a very particular kind of teacher.  They have to be willing to take risks with their practice: Let’s Think requires them to fundamentally rethink some of their ingrained teaching habits, to try something new, probably to experience initial failure, before redeveloping a new kind of expertise.  They have to have a collaborative mindset: they will need to induct their colleagues carefully into the approach, not expecting too much of them and being sensitive to teachers who might find Let’s Think very different to their normal maths teaching.  They have to be generous: they will have to spend time with colleagues supporting them to understand the approach and helping them to plan lessons.  They have to have a positive mindset: we want them to champion the approach in the school, so that colleagues believe in its potential, and they will need to respond positively to feedback from me as tutor during the live teaching we do in professional development sessions, so that they can develop expertise in the approach as quickly as possible. During each of my two day visits, I built in time to deliver some short introductory sessions to all teachers at their weekly staff meeting.  This gave all teachers an overview of the theory behind Let’s Think and the principles of the pedagogy and lesson design.  Hopefully, this would help them make sense of the team teaching they did with their colleagues. Finally, I made use of two key sets of resources to support teachers who would be working with other colleagues in my absence.  Firstly, I used the library of lesson simulations the Let’s Think Maths tutor team have been putting together on the Let’s Think Community website.  In essence, this is a way to access a tutor explaining a lesson through an interactive video, an activity that can be done collaboratively with colleagues.  This is a way to develop expertise via tutor support but without the need for the tutor to be present.  It would be a tricky resource for those new to Let’s Think to use, but can be very supportive to teachers who understand Let’s Think but want to get to know a new lesson.   Secondly, I asked the teachers I was supporting to read chapters from the Let’s Think Handbook.  This book explains the Piagetian and Vygotskian theories that underpin the design of Let’s Think lessons, and also helps teachers get a deep understanding of the core pedagogical principles: concrete preparation, cognitive conflict, social construction and metacognition.  This would help them explain to colleagues why they were implementing the approach, the difference it makes to learning and the rationale behind its design. It is early days with the professional development programme - we have the right teachers in place, they have begun to team teach, and they are definitely developing their own teaching expertise.  What is important to me is to leave the school in a place where they no longer need my services as a tutor - in essence, to make myself redundant.  That is the true test of whole school Let’s Think implementation, and I am looking forward to seeing it at the school.       [post_title] => Let’s Think: building capacity, developing whole school practice [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => lets-think-building-capacity-developing-whole-school-practice [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1545 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1541 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2025-02-12 13:02:04 [post_date_gmt] => 2025-02-12 13:02:04 [post_content] => When Let’s Think in English is introduced in a primary school, leaders and teachers often sense the potential to develop a whole school pedagogy based on the collective development of thought through challenge.  They see that Cognitive Acceleration (CA) grows from social, cultural classroom habits that create a dynamic fulfilment through learning together. If we can nurture these habits from age 6/7, can we do so with our youngest learners? Working with children age 4-6 holds a specific challenge and an exciting potential.  Essentially, Piaget helps us to conceive the challenge:

• Young children are ‘pre-operational’ or not yet capable of hearing a thinking voice in their head. They tend to need external props, objects, pictures and words on the journey to symbolise an idea in their mind.
• At this stage, children tend to be limited to egocentric perspectives: seeing the world only through the lens of their own feelings, instincts and experience. Moreover, their perception tends to be limited to noticing single variables in a situation or problem.

So if I can’t think without talking or manipulating objects and I am limited to seeing from my own perspective, collaborative problem solving will carry an additional challenge. However, Vygotsky helps us to understand and construct a way to work with and through the challenge:

• Young children need to verbalise their thinking for thought to come into being. Language at once transports and transforms thought.
• This ‘transformation’ can be accelerated through dialogic exchange with others who guide me to new ways of thinking.
• Other learners notice different aspects of a problem and share different perspectives, opening up the cognitive field of play for development.

Essentially, if I’m little, learning socially may be in some ways harder, but is exactly what I need to develop to become myself in the world.  I have tried to summarise this in the figure below.     As a Let’s Think in English Tutor, I have been lucky to work with a group of KS1 teachers and leaders on developing practical strategies to build the habits and rituals of the CA classroom with young children.  Our resulting guidebook carved out four territories for teachers to work and reflect on, as they journey to build a culture of thinking together.  The scope of each territory is summarised below. 1. Establish tangible new ways of working   Just as new ways of thinking must be externalised first through talk, so we need to tangibly externalise new ways of being and learning together.  This involves modelling basics like how a pair or trio of pupils sit together, using an object to support turn-taking, slowing down the process of listening not just as being quiet and using eye-contact but actively listening and repeating what another child has said in your own words.  Dialogue that see-saws from whole group to pair work to whole group makes significant self-regulation demands on young learners.  We advise building this see-saw initially as pairs within a guided group of six.   2.  Design tasks that stimulate challenge or conflict Children – in fact, human beings – are more likely to engage in collaborative talk when faced with an intriguing but not baffling puzzle: we seek to solve the knowledge gap.  Our group came up with a range of task types easily adapted to curriculum areas:

• Power of prediction: Set the context (a story, an experiment, a change), pause, predict what will happen, explain prediction, reveal the outcome, reflect. This pattern is particularly apposite in stories before moments of plot twist or surprising character development.
• Would you rather? Taken from two wonderful books by John Burningham that set imaginative dilemmas (Would you rather a pig borrowed your clothes or an eagle stole your dinner?) These can be devised and fed into all sorts of topics: e.g. Settlements: Would you rather build a house in the woods or by the sea?
• Talking points. Used extensively by the Thinking Together Oracy Cambridge team – present children with a statement with which they agree or disagree e.g.
• Red Riding Hood deserved to be eaten.
• The little car will go fastest down the slope.
• Rank order: give pictures of 3 options. Which character is most to blame?  Which object is most useful for living in the woods?

  3.  Develop new modes, goals and moves in teacher talk   The way that we think aloud, wonder, explore and weigh up ideas provides the sea in which children’s ideas can swim, form and reform.

• Modality: Children sense very intuitively the mode of teachers who are exploratory and open to new ideas in their own discourse.

Think how a more closed stance to arrive at a specific answer can be opened up with the following teacher cues:

• Let’s come together and see what ideas we have in the room…
• Dani, could you share your group’s idea?
• Are there more reasons why we could agree with this?
• Is there a group with a different idea?
• Now we have listened to two different ideas, has anyone changed their mind?

 

• Fascination and focus as feedback: The highest form of evaluation for children’s ideas is to give their ideas time and attention:
• Thank you, this is a new idea. Can you show us the moment in the book that made your group think that?
• Can anyone build on this group’s idea? Is there more to say about this?
• Most groups have said X but this group have suggested a new idea Y. “Let’s all talk about why they might have thought that.”

 

• Supporting clarity and elaboration: Since children’s ideas are being effortfully transposed into language, they often need support to make them more fully formed and available to the rest of the group:
• You think he’s sneaky because…?
• Who could give us another word for sneaky?
• Is there another reason why he is sneaky?

 

• Orienting and monitoring ideas: Since capturing ideas through words is emerging in this phase, teachers need to draw ‘markers in the sand’ as it were to help children grow into metacognitive beings – aware of and tracking their own thought
• So far we have two ideas in the room: We have X and we have Y.  Let’s keep going and see if one seems more possible than the other - or
• Go back to your group and talk about which idea you most agree with: X or Y

  4.  Monitor and nurture new modes in pupil talk Once basic group work and turn taking routines are in place, teachers spoke of sharing manageable progression steps with their young learners to build from surface social interaction to an exchange of ideas.  The group devised a simple taxonomy from CA research to support classroom teachers to formatively assess stages and steps in the efficacy of collaborative problem solving through KS1.   As before, a desirable behaviour would first be modelled by the teacher and perhaps be set as an explicit target with an oral scaffold e.g being able to disagree respectfully:

• I think differently because…
• That’s a good idea, but I think…

  The CA Piaget plus Vygotsky theoretical prism helps us to understand that creating the readiness to think together is essential, not just desirable in the early years at school.  Our current Let’s Think in English network of schools has shown us how teachers can practically, thoughtfully and strategically build that readiness. If readers are interested in reading the full ‘Creating readiness’ handbook, do get in touch! [email protected] With thanks and credit to teachers and leaders at: Four Marks C of E Primary, Hampshire The Nebula Federation, Norfolk The Fryern Federation, Hampshire Ryefield Primary, Uxbridge     [post_title] => Creating the readiness to think together at KS1 [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => creating-the-readiness-to-think-together-at-ks1 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-02-12 13:02:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-02-12 13:02:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1541 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1534 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-12-04 13:59:10 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-12-04 13:59:10 [post_content] => Every now and again comes a point in time that leads to a significant change in direction in education. The forthcoming curriculum review by the Department for Education may just be one of those times.   The current national curriculum has been in place, largely unchanged, for just over 10 years and counting. This has been the longest period of stability since the introduction of the national curriculum in 1989 (fig 1). The current direction was set by a desire to introduce a more demanding and ambitious curriculum, rich in knowledge to help drive up academic standards and help children succeed in life. Areas that had previously been described as ‘skills’ were reframed as different types of knowledge, such as disciplinary knowledge in science and procedural knowledge in maths. This new vocabulary meant that aspects of learning previously described as skills were perhaps out of favour. Thinking skills was an example.   Fundamentally, there is a lot to agree with in the concept of ‘rich knowledge’. Secure schema formation is built by connecting secure knowledge together in a way that explains the world. However, in the interpretation of a ‘knowledge rich curriculum’, there has always been the risk that building knowledge was seen as the goal of the curriculum without appreciating that important element of connection.   The purpose of education When considering my response to the curriculum review, I’m reminded of the following quote: “It is proposed that the purpose of education is to enable people to live happy, healthy and useful lives — now and in the future.” Sugata Mitra (2020) Any consideration of curriculum and assessment would be well placed to consider this as a starting point.     What should schools be doing to achieve this purpose of education? I've had the privilege of working with thousands of teachers, leaders and governors across hundreds of schools. One of the most common activities I've used involves mapping out what the teachers, leaders and governors would like their learners to become. They have identified attributes of the ‘ideal learner’. The words they use to describe these are often quite similar (see fig 2 for a word cloud, showing the most-often occurring words as largest).     This adds more details about the components of any curriculum that supports pupils on their journey into adulthood.   Learning is about connecting knowledge Any teachers of a Let’s Think approach will know that learning is all about connections. When I was trained as a CASE teacher, I learnt quickly that the start of each lesson recapped or introduced key vocabulary and checked that there was a secure knowledge and understanding before moving to more demanding activities. The lessons then tended to look at connecting knowledge together in a meaningful way, looking at exceptions to commonly understood rules and helping children become accustomed to counterintuitive ideas through social construction.   A crucial component of CASE is developing the ability of pupils to be critical in their thinking, to see beyond that which is immediately obvious and to see the subtly and nuance in the world around them. This really helps with understanding where rules apply and where they don’t. This helps pupils understand subjects in a connected way that comes with an appreciation of the limits of their knowledge. This helps them separate the facts from fiction, exacting truth from hyperbole and prepares them to deal with a world of smoke and mirrors where exploitative people and organisations might lead them to think or act in a way that is detrimental to them in the long term.   Aside from the rapid development of science substantive knowledge (biology, chemistry and physics) and the disciplinary knowledge (working scientifically) that I’ve seen result from schools where I’ve implemented (or supported the implementation) of CASE, what I’ve noticed as a positive side effect is the ‘extras’ that this particular approach to teaching has provided. This includes:

• collaborative group work (aligning to ‘team-player’)
• well-articulated discussion (aligning to the ‘good communicator’)
• well-developed problem-solving skills (aligned to ‘inquisitive’ and ‘problem-solver’)
• pupils keeping going when they are challenged (aligned to ‘resilient’)
• high levels of enthusiasm (aligned to enthusiastic)

  In short, well implemented Let’s Think lessons develop a much broader set of attributes. Although the graphic in figure 2 aligns very closely with what educators envisage for their learners, that particular graphic comes from a frequency analysis carried out with a group of STEM-based employers. They align very strongly with the views of educators, but it is interesting to note that it is what the employers are looking for in their employees.   An opportunity…? Back to the curriculum review - here is the opportunity to make this a significant point in time. There is an opportunity to ensure that the curriculum prepares children for the future. It is a future where their ability to think critically, to work as a team and to solve problems will serve them well.   References: Mitra, S (2020) Children and the Internet: Learning, in the Times to Come. Journal of Learning for Development vol 7 no 3 pp286-303. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1280603.pdf [post_title] => A significant point in time…? [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => a-significant-point-in-time [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-12-04 13:59:39 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-12-04 13:59:39 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1534 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [3] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1530 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-11-21 11:43:20 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-11-21 11:43:20 [post_content] => I have been teaching Let’s Think in English (LTE) for over a decade now, and for the majority of my career this has been in Upper Key Stage 2, and Year 6 in particular.  I distinctly remember the first moment I fell in love with teaching LTE.  I was a bright eyed, energetic NQT (as it was then) with a love of English, but I had yet to find what I was really looking for in English lessons.  I think it was that ‘getting lost in a book’ feeling… when the eyes glaze over… when the child leaves the real world and enters the imaginary.  In the old days they called it, ‘awe and wonder’.  These days they call it, “Blimey… they are engaged!” The first lesson I taught was ‘Lulu’.  The Charles Causley poem, “What has happened to Lulu?” is written almost entirely in question form, and hints at something happening to Lulu, without ever letting on the full details.  I remember reading the poem, trying not to give away my own reading of it by staying as neutral in tone as possible, which was part of the training.  When I teach now, my internal ‘teacher’ dialogue is still constantly reminding me, “Don’t guide their thinking to your ideas, no right answers, don’t praise what they say overtly - it stops them thinking, the best praise is the taking up of the idea by their peers.”  The training provided lots of small teacher ‘moves’ like this, tips that only really make sense when discussed face to face, rather than written in a guide online.  I finished the poem, and then asked the first question, What has happened to Lulu? A moment of silence… contemplation… then the groups of three burst into talk, testing out ideas, changing them, agreeing, confirming, challenging, and building upon their initial thoughts.  They talked passionately about these ideas, and their eyes were glazed. They weren’t ‘performing’.  They really wanted to say what they thought.  They really wanted to listen to each other.  They really wanted to ‘think’.  And it was me who felt the awe and wonder. Many years later, teaching Let’s Think still feels like this. This year though, for the first time in my career, I am teaching Year 4.  These days, and at risk of sounding like a grumpy old timer, you hear a lot of teachers (and parents) discussing the fact that it seems children’s attention spans are shorter.  But it’s evident in the classroom. Many are more demanding of quick input and wanting instant reward.  They talk to each other in memes, and flit between subjects of conversation naturally and easily.  Many impulsively verbalise their thoughts, and discuss things as they are happening, not after. They struggle to listen for any lengthy period of time, and they seem to find it more difficult to listen to each other’s ideas, preferring to focus on their own.  There is a certain competition, a need to be first, to be noticed more than others, to not wait. I can feel the development difference Piaget delineated - they are more egocentric, they struggle to wait for attention and they compete for it.  They battle with great ferocity to be the first in line when it comes to lining up for… well… anything! They also find it harder to move from their own perspective, to move on from their first thought.  They often find it more difficult to abstract from their own concrete understanding, to generalise, to find themes and links.  They are also extraordinarily fidgety, and incredibly adept at constructing complex buildings from stationery… but they are also harder to impress, harder to surprise. However, when we do Let’s Think, it’s different.  They somehow move into a different mode.  They are calmer, and listen more attentively.  They still burst from contemplative silence into passionate discussion and idea building.  They construct their ideas more carefully and build on each other’s.  And they really like it.  They enjoy Let’s Think, a lot. Why? It doesn’t offer them instant reward.  It isn’t split into short seven-second chunks.  There aren’t even any rulers to make bridges out of.  It made me think of that ‘awe and wonder’ thing.  Maybe that happens when something is ‘new’.  Something they haven’t seen before, something that isn’t easily assimilated.  I was thinking about our Science topic on ‘Sound’.  Kids aren’t as easily impressed by technology any more.  The decibel meter wasn’t a moment of excitement.  The YouTube videos on amazing sounds were passé.  But the cup and string… that was properly exciting. I wonder if maybe the mode of a Let’s Think lesson, a slowing down, a thoughtful contemplation in a social environment, feels ‘new’ to them.  Maybe they experience it differently because it doesn’t instantly gratify, there is no right answer to check at a marking station, they can take their time together to form ideas.  Crucially I think, they have time to predict. They can form those predictions carefully from the evidence available, and their wider knowledge of the world. They do it together, and then they get the pay-off of seeing if they were right, (though they often enjoy it most if they aren’t, because they are surprised!)  Even if they aren’t rewarded with the truth, as is the case in “What’s happened to Lulu”, they are rewarded by their peers building on their ideas, or seeing that their idea was worthy of challenge.  They also do it together, in collaboration.  There isn’t a race, it’s a shared progression of thinking. Not one person’s opinion matters more, and rather the idea itself is most important.  It’s we think, and a question of do we agree? This begs the question, if children’s brains are in some part being re-wired by their social environment, how ought we to respond? Should we teach lessons in short chunks, feed their instant reward systems, or should we expose them to a ‘slowing down’, a more thoughtful mode. Time to stand and stare.  Maybe both are right, but one thing’s for certain, they still really like Let’s Think lessons, and so do I. [post_title] => Slowing down speeds up intelligence - Teaching Let’s Think in an age of instant gratification [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => slowing-down-speeds-up-intelligence-teaching-lets-think-in-an-age-of-instant-gratification [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-11-21 11:43:20 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-11-21 11:43:20 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1530 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [4] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1520 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-10-23 14:05:41 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-10-23 13:05:41 [post_content] => In the immediate wake of the unsettling reports of the riots in England this summer,  our new Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, announced that within her upcoming review of the national curriculum, there needs to be a consideration of how  “…to embed critical skills in lessons to arm our children against the disinformation, fake news and putrid conspiracy theories awash on social media”. I embarked on my journey with Cognitive Acceleration (CA) nearly 25 years ago, as the senior research officer and developer of the primary  KS2 CASE materials, ‘Let’s Think Through Science’. This deeply transformative professional experience spurred me on to focus my PhD research on how teachers use classroom talk to promote thinking in primary CASE classrooms. The current (and encouraging) renewed attention to the explicit teaching of critical thinking brought to mind what I noticed through my PhD research, when a ‘critical incident’ occurred during an episode of observed whole class talk within a primary CASE lesson. In my work, ‘critical incidents’ were those spontaneous, unsolicited, and      potentially lesson-     derailing points in a discussion when an idea/answer/teacher explanation is challenged. I discovered that cultivating a classroom climate for critical thinking relied on how a teacher chose to respond to these critical incidents, in that moment. I also learnt that this was a complex professional decision influenced by so many factors including  time,      meeting lesson objectives and adapting practice to ensure all learners access the learning. Let us step inside a primary CASE classroom to see this in action: In this lesson, the learners in their ‘thinking’ groups, have been classifying a collection of objects (pipe cleaner, battery, foil, specially prepared samples of aluminium, steel, brass and copper, 100g weight, 1 pence, 2 pence) into things that they think are magnetic and things that they think are not. They are now sharing their findings in a whole class discussion. Teacher: I would like some help to fill out our list of magnetic and non-magnetic items. Teacher: Ok. Thank you. Joshua Joshua: Penny -magnetic Teacher: Penny. Ok. So, a penny (writes down penny in the magnetic column) At one table, a learner, Ibrahim is thinking... “What? A penny?” So, as the teacher continues with the whole class discussion, there is some whispering going on in his group about this cognitive conflict. Ibrahim tries their penny again. It is not magnetic. Ibrahim interrupts the whole class discussion.  Ibrahim: The penny wasn’t magnetic. General murmur from class: It was. No, it wasn’t. The whole class discussion breaks down. There are lots of different discussions around the room in response to this. The teacher catches the researcher’s eye and smiles. Teacher: Ok. This is interesting. Ssh. OK. What penny have you got? 1p or 2p? Ibrahim: 2p Teacher: Right. Can you bring it over? (Ibrahim brings his penny up. One learner is heard saying, “The 1 penny works”. The teacher tries this in front of the class.) Teacher: Anyone else has got a 2p? Another group (Sophie’s) offer up their magnetic 2p. One learner says, “they got a shiny one.” Teacher: We have got this 2p and this 2p. There are both 2p. And this one is Sophie’s one (Teacher tries it with a magnet in front of the class). It is magnetic. And this one is Ibrahim’s (Teacher tries it with the same magnet several times-it is not magnetic). The class are genuinely puzzled. ‘What?!’ is expressed by a few. And mini discussions break out again. Teacher: OK. I want us to have a bit of think about this. This is very interesting. The 2p coins are both 2p. Do you think they both should do the same thing then? (Whole class respond in unison: “Yeah.”) So, what has happened? The Cognitive Acceleration programme supported the teachers participating in my study to establish the conditions for thinking, informed by Piagetian and Vygotskian theoretical principles for cognitive development, like many of you reading this. They understood and effectively applied the principles of concrete preparation, social construction, cognitive conflict, metacognition and bridging to enable learner engagement with a collaborative cognitive challenge. The extract of classroom dialogue above suggests that these principles were implemented in order to reach this critical point in the lesson. But what this teacher decided to do, ‘in this moment,’ was pivotal in transforming this into an opportunity for critical thinking. Ibrahim interrupted the discussion. His interjection was unsolicited and triggered a breakdown      in the whole class discussion. You might say that this de-stabilised the classroom climate for learning. Another teacher might have responded differently in order to reinstate control and meet the learning objectives within a tight time frame. The extract captures both the genuine excitement from the class and the skilful facilitation from the class teacher who goes on to use this spontaneous challenge to develop a deeper collective class understanding of magnetic materials. To think critically requires us to understand that firstly we need to engage with the available information and evidence (‘From your investigations, which objects were magnetic, and which were not?’). Then we need to evaluate all the arguments with an open mind before reaching an informed decision. Sounds straightforward, perhaps, for some. Approaching an idea with an open mind when this conflicts with your current thinking (‘Why are these coins behaving differently?’) can be challenging for adults as well as learners. Equally difficult is having the skills and confidence to challenge what is being presented as a widely accepted view (“My penny wasn’t magnetic”). Programmes like CA create opportunities for teachers to nurture a learner's appetite      to question, be open to alternative perspectives and seek deeper understanding through this process. Capitalise on CA to cultivate a classroom culture for critical thinking and in your next lesson:

• Use ground rules/ success/assessment criteria to prepare learners to engage with critical thinking. “I am looking forward to noticing how you embrace and challenge new and different ideas today.”
• Remember that developing thinking in the classroom takes time and regular practice. Be kind and patient with yourself.
• Try to carve out a tiny bit of space (breathe) so that you can be receptive to spontaneous learner responses- those critical incidents. Take a second to pause, assess the potential for critical thinking, and bravely pivot your next pedagogical step to cultivate critical thinking.

[post_title] => Cultivating a Classroom Climate for Critical Thinking: Strategies and Insights [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => cultivating-a-classroom-climate-for-critical-thinking-strategies-and-insights [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-10-23 14:05:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-10-23 13:05:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1520 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [5] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1514 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-07-03 12:51:35 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-07-03 11:51:35 [post_content] => In 2020 a partnership was put in place between the Let’s Think Forum (LTF) and Vanguard Learning Trust (VLT), a multi-academy trust in the London Borough of Hillingdon comprising two secondary, one junior and two primary schools.  The partnership established a hub which aimed to develop teachers’ classroom practice with the Let’s Think (LT) methodology as well as create a sustainable foundation for the LT programmes at both primary and secondary levels. The hub was set up during the pandemic and therefore the first couple of years involved online training for staff. It was the first time that the LTF had been able to work jointly with primary and secondary colleagues focusing on the English, mathematics and science programmes. Online sessions were half-termly led by one of the three tutors involved in the hub, Michael Walsh, LT English tutor, Lynda Maple, LT mathematics tutor, and Martina Lecky, LT science tutor (and CEO of VLT). The sessions focused on the theoretical underpinnings of LT including Piaget’s cognitive stage development model and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development; the evidence base of LT programmes, in particular those of the first programme, CASE; the classroom methodology with examples of how the ‘five pillars’ are facilitated by the teacher, especially questioning techniques; and subject breakouts to consider specific lessons. ‘I was proud that during the pandemic we were able to launch the LT-VLT hub. Whilst the online sessions limited some aspects of the training in terms of participants’ feedback, they were well attended; allowed teachers to continue to deliver LT lessons; and provided tutors with the experience of leading joint sessions with colleagues.’ Martina Lecky, CEO of Vanguard Learning Trust and LT science tutor   Once LT tutors could begin visiting schools again in 2022, LT tutors focused on lesson observations as an important mediating factor for teachers’ adoption of the classroom practice. This involved demonstration lessons by tutors or lessons by teachers honing their skills with the methodology.   ‘I have been very impressed by the talented teachers who have committed to developing their understanding of Lets Think through their involvement in the LT mathematics programme. They display a sound approach to helping their pupils enhance their reasoning skills and confidence as learners. ‘ Lynda Maple, LT maths tutor As an experienced secondary practitioner, Martina, the CEO, enjoyed the opportunity to teach for the first time one of the LT primary science lessons, on the reasoning pattern of classification, with Ryefield Primary School’s Year 6 students in March 2022, repeating this with other classes in Ryefield and at Hermitage Primary School. The students’ responses to the lessons reinforced Martina’s belief that students should be given regular opportunities to be cognitively challenged in lessons and that through working with their peers and facilitation by the teacher, they can begin to construct their understanding of different concepts.  Wayne Murray, Assistant Headteacher of Ryefield Primary School, commented after the lesson at Ryefield: ‘I really enjoyed it (as did the class) and particularly liked how a healthy competitive element led to great engagement.’   As part of the programme for the hub, 2022-2023, a conference took place on Wednesday 28th June 2023 at Brunel University for the staff who had participated in the training programme. The schedule  involved three sessions which were a review of the year regarding professional development, lesson simulations of the classroom methodology and a discussion on the plans for next year. The highlight was the lesson simulations as participants and the tutors took part in activities which allowed them to consider students’ reasoning, in particular how students respond to lesson challenges. Participants’ feedback was very positive, exemplified by the following: ‘The conference was a great way to connect LT teachers and discuss the next steps for our own schools collaboratively.’ Morgan Casey, Ryefield Primary School; ‘I enjoyed the science demonstration and the English poem/picture correlation. I can see how the right kind of questioning can lead the students to solve the problem on their own.’ Meghana Malegaonkar, Vyners School; and  ‘I thought it was very useful. I feel it would be beneficial for all teachers within the Trust, especially primary teachers, to be given the same information as it helped to understand how Let's Think works and how we, as teachers, can deliver sessions better.’ Lestacia Stephen, Hermitage Primary School.   The focus throughout 2023-2024 has been on schools working together at a phase and subject level. The tutors’ reflection is that the focus for 2024-2025 will be online sessions where specific activities will be presented to support teachers with planning for the lessons and an encouragement of paired observations in schools. There are also teachers whose experiences to date are likely to lead to them beginning taking on additional responsibility as they move from competent to expert practitioners. Morgan Casey at Ryefield has been invited to take a leadership role and she commented:  ‘One of the most beneficial pieces of CPD I have received has been Let's Think in English and involvement with the VLT and LT hub. The LT network meetings are a great showcase of good practice from other LT schools. Meanwhile, the LT hub provides staff with a more tailored picture of how staff and students within the Trust engage with LT and where areas for development may be.’ [post_title] => Vanguard Learning Trust [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => vanguard-learning-trust [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-07-03 12:52:07 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-07-03 11:52:07 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1514 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [6] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1511 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-05-15 11:48:59 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-05-15 10:48:59 [post_content] => For the past two years I have been on an interesting professional journey and it is one that has been characterised by great joy. So much so that I have called this reflective blog “The joy of learning”. From the outset there are three people I need to acknowledge:

• Mundher Adhami, my mentor and author of the Thinking Maths materials,
• Kay Wetherall, the Maths Lead at Harry Watts Academy, an ASD school in Sunderland and,
• James Philips a colleague who works in a special school in the South West of England.

  Each of the individuals named above provides a key piece of the jigsaw that allows me to articulate a view of learning that is now more inclusive of joy. Since 2021 I have worked almost solely in special schools, for both the NCETM and STEM Learning, which included opportunities for me to teach a range of children at different developmental stages. For purposes of simplicity I will frame my reflections around a single lesson I taught with Kaye’s class of Year 8 boys, many of whom, in terms of mathematics, are working at the level of a typical Year 3 child. I needed to teach so that I could better understand the nature of autism in relation to the learning of mathematics. The lesson I chose to teach on my first visit was called ‘Feeding Fish’ which involves images such as the one below: The aim is not to focus here upon the lesson in any great detail but rather to illustrate how it’s coincidental use has caused me reconsider an aspect of Let’s Think practice that is termed ‘concrete preparation’. First let me recount what happened during the lesson with Kaye’s Year 8 class. As they returned from play time (I use this term rather than break for they really do play) I noticed that their attention was fixed on a video Kaye chose for them to watch, showing scenes of tropical fish swimming in an aquarium. She explained that this was their ‘interest’ and she always played it, as it helped them to regulate and settle. I began to smile as I showed her the above resource, and so, when I began by asking them if they knew anything about fish, they gave me their full attention. One boy, Ryan, shared how he helped his grandfather look after his, and others similarly volunteered personal information about all aspects of fish life and death. To say they were now prepared to engage with the activities I had in mind would be an understatement! Later that year, when talking to James Philips about teaching in special schools I noticed that he used a particular phrase to describe his teaching. This phrase stems from the fact that many autistic children have special interests that often consume their thoughts and attention. James said that such interests can be a route to engage them and to focus their attention. The term he was so careful to use was ‘within their realm’ and he was able to describe how he uses this idea to support his lesson planning for KS3 and 4 mathematics. It was clear that he makes sure any maths he is planning is actually real and within both the experience and interest of the young people he teaches.   These two episodes got me thinking about concrete preparation and its role in my current practice. I had the privilege to know Philip Adey (one of the authors of the original Let’s Think Science materials at KS3) and once heard him describe this aspect of Let’s Think pedagogy as: “a phase in which the language of the problem is introduced and also the context in which the problem is set. This is to ensure that the difficulties encountered are not compounded by problems of language or context.” As I began my Let’s Think journey I viewed this as the need to give pupils the language tools they might need in the lesson and ensuring clarity regarding the aims of what was to come. I can be ambiguous and so I do work hard at being clear. But recently I have come to realise the importance of the ideas of Moll, a Vygotskian scholar, who argues that children carry ‘funds of knowledge’ with them into the classroom. Such ‘funds’ refer to the knowledge and skills, both historically accumulated and culturally developed, that pupils naturally acquire as part of their life experience.   My understanding regarding this was further deepened during the years I spent with Mundher Adhami and the multitude of different ways he would use to articulate the structure of Let’s Think Maths lessons. The model that particularly caught my attention, and the one I have tried to represent diagrammatically, is shown below:   I like this model, as for me it captures the fact that Let’s Think Maths lessons have a sequential, rising cognitive demand i.e. a low floor and a high ceiling, and that this takes place over time, resulting from pupils engaging with the thinking agenda of the lesson. Similarly it highlights the fact that each episode has a very different feel which can be planned for, which is why I include concrete preparation as a key descriptive feature of episode 1.   These encounters coupled with my current experiences of Let’s Think practice in special schools have enabled me to reflect upon the following three areas of influence:

1. Kaye’s class’s level of engagement stemming from a deep personal interest in the context chosen to introduce the mathematics;
2. James’s use of the term ‘within their realm’ as a label to help articulate the nature of learner;
3. and Mundher’s diagram, revealing the fact that Let’s Think Maths lessons often begin with a period of engagement where the mathematics is hidden within the context used to start the learning journey;

and to view them as streams flowing together to support a deeper understanding of engaging children. This has been further catalysed by the very special pupils I am now encountering some 32 years after teaching my first Let’s Think Science lesson.   It’s a sad realisation but I now see more clearly than ever how false the classroom is for many, and here I include my own children. In addition to this, the behaviour norms and learned compliance only serve to blind us to the fact that many are not simply engaged in those treasured lessons we so carefully plan.   In special schools, it is obvious that the classroom norms present in many mainstream schools do not work and I have now seen many incidents where the ‘funds of interest’ that pupils bring with them enable lessons to be tailored to meet their needs. A common piece of advice often given to mainstream teachers by special school colleagues is to get to know their pupils, using their EHCP, for example, so that they can bring these ‘interests’ into the lesson as a way to really engage and motivate pupils.   The result of this knowledge is joy, pure joy and engagement in a way I so rarely observe in the mainstream secondary classroom.  I have seen more unfiltered joy and experienced so many more fist bumps in the past three years than the previous twenty and this level of enjoyment is making me seriously take stock of my classroom practice.   Moll & Whitmore, 1993,  Lessons from research with language-minority children, Journal of Reading Behaviour, Volume 26, number 4 [post_title] => The Joy of Learning [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-joy-of-learning [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-05-15 11:50:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-05-15 10:50:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1511 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [7] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1505 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-04-18 11:08:57 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-04-18 10:08:57 [post_content] =>   What skills and knowledge do leaders need to confidently lead Let’s Think in their schools?  This is the question I asked myself when designing a Leading Let’s Think programme for three schools in England.   I came up with a long list of ideas:  

1. These leaders need to be able to teach strong lessons: they need to feel confident modelling Let’s Think to other colleagues.  This means they need to have taught a lot of lessons, more than once each.

 

1. These leaders need to be able to give teachers helpful and supportive feedback to help them improve their practice.  This means they need to be skilful coaches and knowledgeable about a variety of Let’s Think lessons, across key stages. They need to understand the stages a Let’s Think learner goes through, and what suitable next steps for practice might look like. When we ask teachers which lessons they have never taught, they always say it’s the ones no-one has simulated for them - an expert simulation gives teachers confidence to teach.

 

1. They need to be able to simulate a lesson for colleagues so that colleagues can teach new lessons.

They will need to understand how to enable teachers to feel confident about a new lesson, how to help them explore the mathematics and consider the classroom management implications of the lesson.  

4. They need to be able to teach a new lesson without tutor support.   We need Let’s Think leaders to develop the confidence to tackle new lessons without a tutor being present.  This enables Let’s Think to become embedded over the long term in a school, as no lesson is off limits.

 

5. They need to have a deep understanding of Let’s Think theory and practice.  They need to use this knowledge to persuade others that it’s worth it, even if it’s difficult, so they need to have a deep understanding of the ‘why’ and how it works.  They need to develop this through reading and research, so that they hold the expertise for the school.

  With these five needs in mind, I designed a programme to develop six school leaders across three schools.  The programme involved opportunities to plan a coaching programme for a colleague, considering the progression a teacher might follow with their practice, and to troubleshoot around challenges they might face when coaching.  This helped them feel confident to go on and work with a variety of different teachers, with different levels of experience.     The programme also involved reading chapters from the Let’s Think Handbook, so that they knew the theory behind the approach, how and why it works and what the impact evidence is.  This gave them the confidence of ‘experts’.  Alongside this, they watched me as tutor give a lesson simulation and metacognitively analyse this experience to understand what the tutor is trying to do.  These two activities gave leaders the confidence to run a series of staff meetings with teachers, and they reflected on these together, exploring what they could do to improve on their planning. They discussed strategies for exploring a brand new lesson, and agreed a checklist.  They then went away and put this checklist into action, by working with fellow teachers to plan and try a new lesson.   Finally, and perhaps most powerfully, they visited each other’s schools, observed Let’s Think lessons across a variety of year groups and created reports for the teachers that analysed strengths of the provision, suggested next steps and mapped how Let’s Think leaders would support these next steps.  These reports were carefully constructed so that they did not judge individual teachers, but offered a constructive piece of feedback for the whole school.   This model seems to offer a powerful way for schools to become independent and self-sustaining Let’s Think schools.  The programme has made them more confident in their own skills and knowledge, as well as giving them a pathway for improving practice across the school.  We’d love to offer this programme to more leaders - get in touch if you are interested!  [post_title] => Developing leaders of Let’s Think in schools [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => developing-leaders-of-lets-think-in-schools [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-18 11:10:00 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-18 10:10:00 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1505 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [8] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1502 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-03-13 13:41:43 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-03-13 13:41:43 [post_content] => In the last blog, Bringing the benefits of Let’s Think to Primary Geography Part 1 « Let's Think (letsthink.org.uk) we looked at the claims made by Let’s Think, how that depends, in part, on lesson structure and how, in this primary Geography project we saw, as in other Let’s Think interventions, a profound impact on the children’s engagement. The project achieved its main outcome of some trialled lessons but we also wanted to understand, with the teachers involved, how that came about and the impact it had on them as experienced practitioners.  We came to learn that our short development had a dramatic impact on their practice as Let’s Think teachers, was influential on their deep knowledge of the psychological basis of Let’s Think lessons and on their knowledge of Geography.  It gave them agency as teachers and prompted wider developments in their schools.  We were profoundly affected by the pupils’ reactions to those lessons based on Sustainable Development Goals and learnt in this that if the content matters to children, their agency has an impact on their reasoning too. Understanding our development We were a team made up of tutor in Let’s Think science and mathematics, a tutor in Let’s Think English, an Associate Professor of Education with a Geography specialism and passion for sustainability, an acting headteacher, and three teachers who had been trained in Let’s Think through English. Four women, two men, aged from our 30’s to our 60’s. All ‘White British’. Some knew each other but some had only met through the project. We would work across three junior schools close to Chandlers Ford in Hampshire. What we wanted to achieve as a secondary outcome of the project was an understanding of how we would need to be as practitioners to create such lessons.  What does a team of people have to do to produce Let’s Think lessons in a new subject? What would they gain from the process?   The process of lesson development The model of lesson development approximated to Lesson Study with, ‘creating Let’s Think lessons in primary Geography’ as the professional development goal.  Each lesson would come from a planning day, where the team aimed for this ideal in different content areas, requiring different reasoning.  The content was representative of content applicable to Sustainable Development Goals. The reasoning was drawn from the work of Piaget. The whole team worked on these ideal ‘Let’s Think lessons in primary Geography’

• The ‘seed’ of any lesson was some experience or question that had been prepared by a Let’s Think tutor, something that, in a Geography context might be puzzling to this age of children at their developmental stage. This ‘seed’ was often shared with the teachers in a brief lesson simulation, giving the teachers some experience of where the challenge lay but not enough to be a lesson on Let’s Think pedagogical principles, just yet.
• Because teachers often acknowledged, in the development of the lesson, that their Geography knowledge was weaker than in other areas there was usually a teachers’ briefing note, typically running to 6 pages of text, links and examples, and placing the lesson content in the broader context of the Geography concepts, the powerful knowledge of the subject. Teachers had read this in advance.
• Because we were developing lessons based on Piaget’s empirical studies of children’s reasoning, reasoning that was relevant to Geography, we studied on our planning day how children reasoned at their stage of development and were therefore ready to present a challenge to that. 
• The lessons were simulated on the planning day, being tested against other teachers’ understanding of an ideal Let’s Think primary Geography lesson and then redrafted by the project team to give a best fit to Let’s Think pedagogy. 

Therefore the teachers, through a day of planning with the tutors and a Geography specialist came to each new lesson prepared. They had developed subject knowledge, knowledge about the reasoning typical for this age of child and had participated in the creation of the lesson they would now trial. They were also experienced teachers and teachers who had developed their practice in let’s Think, chiefly through Let’s Think in English. 

• The lessons were then planned for their class by the teacher, and observed in a first trial by another member of the project team. These observations were the basis of shared reflections which were used by the teacher to make further modifications, and create lessons that were then shared with the whole team at the start of the next lesson planning day.

  So what was the impact of this process?  Verity reports that the project contributed to:

• 3.1 The development of a cohesive, professional team (Core Team and teachers) who enjoyed and felt challenged by the process of resource development and piloting.

• 3.2 The Core Team, teachers and learners recognised that the project positively supported their acquisition of geographical knowledge, skills and professional development. In many cases this led to individual and whole school behaviour change relating to mitigation of climate change for protection of people and planet.

• 3.3 The Core Team and teachers reported development of theoretical thinking and deeper

• understanding of Piaget’s reasoning patterns that informed their wider practice as educators.

• 3.4 The development team trusted each other’s expertise as professionals and recognised the discrete and overlapping skills, knowledge and interest each member brought.

  Benefiting the teachers and schools involved. What was an unplanned for but tangible outcome was the benefit to the schools and teachers involved.  We knew we were having fun but Verity identified the following benefits and this points to the success of working in the way we did, developing lessons with the teachers. 3.5 Teachers were more confident and enthusiastic in their teaching of Geography and their own subject knowledge. Teachers intend to use and develop resources from the project in future years. 3.6 Both teachers and learners reported on the importance of listening and how the project and the lessons allowed for the practice and pedagogical development of this skill.   Benefiting the Let’s Think Forum Working in a new subject, with new people and in particular teachers inexperienced in creating Let’s Think lessons helped us as experienced Let’s Think Tutors, articulate our thinking more deeply, attend more carefully to the legacy of Piaget and return to the initial work of his group.  We studied in greater depth the importance of the social construction of new knowledge and reasoning and how co-operation and dialogue play an important role in the classroom.  We are still working on the question of how dialogic teaching and co-operative learning work together to construct new reasoning in a classroom and hope to write about that soon.   What next? We will put Verity’s full report on our website. We will publish the 6 lessons and supporting materials on the Let’s Think website. We are wondering whether it is better to develop a full suite of 30 Geography lessons for years 4 and 5 or whether to hold with 6 in Geography and instead develop 6 for History, 6 for Art, 6 for Music, etc in effect building a Foundation for Primary Thinking.  Your thoughts on the direction to take and this blog are welcomed.   Please write to [email protected]   Thanks to the wonderful Let’s Think Primary Geography project team, known collectively as ‘The Dung Beetles’ in honour of one of the lessons: Sarah Cunningham Kathy Walker Holly Bristow Tom Leigh Leah Crawford Dr Verity Jones [post_title] => Bringing the benefits of Primary Geography to Let’s Think (2) [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => bringing-the-benefits-of-primary-geography-to-lets-think-2 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-03-13 13:41:43 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-03-13 13:41:43 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1502 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [9] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1499 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2024-02-15 10:58:26 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-02-15 10:58:26 [post_content] => What is our claim, as the Let’s Think Forum?  It is that we can design materials and a pedagogic approach that can accelerate the cognitive development of children. We also claim that this acceleration can persist and affect broad domains of achievement, particularly if our approach is used during periods of development when children are especially susceptible to interventions because their cognitive architecture is undergoing change. These are big claims and there is good and growing evidence to support them but the claims are conditional, of course, on some very important factors.

• Duration: our materials and the approach must be applied for a period of two years.
• Intensity: The children should experience a ‘thinking lesson’ at least once a fortnight.
• Teaching Quality: The teacher implementing the approach needs to be trained, needs to practise the approach and needs to have their development coached by an accomplished tutor. They need, for example to become accomplished at establishing a climate of enquiry, become skilled at listening, as well as questioning and understand how they will support group development and discussion
• Curriculum Quality: The lesson materials need to have been carefully designed and shown to have the desired engagement and level of challenge through trials in a number of classrooms.
• Lesson quality. Each lesson needs to have these essential components designed into it:
  • A developmentally appropriate level of challenge based on the Piagetian classification and aimed at challenging all, but a few of the more developed children, at that age.
  • An engaging and open start in which the context for the challenge can be understood and some common terms established within the class, often through a hands on experience and through a shared language made visible or evident.
  • A moment when, through discussion, or from an astute question, a challenge is set but is clearly difficult for the majority in the class to resolve.
  • Periods of shared construction within the lesson where children, and teacher establish new understanding, and importantly, the new reasoning that is needed to do this.
  • An opportunity to recognise that what has been constructed, originated in the thinking and activity of the group and that the processes that achieved this may also have meaning and be worthy of study because they could be valuable in the future.
  • An opportunity to notice that what has been considered, although an isolated or special circumstance, may well be applicable in other, related situations.

Establishing our claims in a new area of the curriculum, primary Geography. When we set out, as we did with Lets Think Primary Geography, to develop Lets Think in a new subject we were taking on the task of establishing these conditions in order to promote cognitive acceleration. Immediately, it is reasonable for a critic to say that we have not met the first two conditions.  They would be right!  We developed 6 lessons, not the 30 we might need, and we presented them to children over a year, not the two years we might need.  We are therefore in no position yet to claim that we have an intervention that could bring about the profound cognitive development seen in CASE and CAME. Fortunately, in this pilot project, that was not our aim. We were mainly aiming to fulfil the last condition, lesson quality. However, we could not establish lesson quality without teaching and curriculum quality.  For the project we therefore chose three schools that had been using other Let’s Think materials and where the teaching of Let’s Think had been developed over time with the support of an experienced tutor. This cluster of Junior schools in Hampshire had been working with Leah Crawford for over 4 years.  The teachers were accomplished at establishing classrooms in which Let’s Think could thrive. They showed over the project that they could help children find the sweet spot where challenge and motivation to take action would take hold. Let’s Think Primary Geography outcomes: Lessons. So do we have Primary Geography lessons that engage, challenge, bring children together to arrive at new thinking, prompt reflection and direct children’s thinking to new contexts for challenges. Did we create Let’s Think Primary Geography lessons?  We think we did. Our project was blessed with having an insightful and objective participant, someone who knows Geography and the primary curriculum.  In Dr. Verity Jones, Associate Professor, School of Education and Childhood, University of the West of England, Bristol we had a researcher keen to understand the nature of Let’s Think and its relevance to geography.  Her initial report on the development of the 6 lessons says this. 3.7 Learners and teachers found Let’s Think Primary Geography lessons interesting and relevant. All participants identified this as being the result of links made to the Sustainable Development Goals. 3.8 Moments of cognitive conflict and behaviour change were frequently referred to positively in focus groups with children.   This is a brief but compelling summary of what we set out to achieve with the lessons. Very, very reassuring and pleasing even! The texture to these broad findings is given in the pupils’ personal statements about the lessons.

• “Well, the difference between geography and Let's Think geography and let's think you actually have to think.”
• “Different between geography and Let's Think is that we discuss more rather than that and just like writing it down and we come back to our ideas and like adding on, we do like adding and challenging if we like think that. A different idea. More than that, and like building, which is building on to that idea.”
• “It was fun because it was really interesting and we learnt a lot.”
• “If you didn’t tell me it was Geography I would know it was anyway.”
• “It felt like a Let’s Think lesson.”
• “I liked it because you slowed the learning down and we talked about it and thought lots.”
• “But when you learn about it and you think really deeply about those little things that you don't usually think about. That’s big in real life”
• “I think it helps us understand anything to do with how to look after the planet and sustainability.”

 

A Let’s Think primary Geography lesson: ‘Naming Places’ The following abbreviated lesson example is based on Piaget’s research into nominal realism. Although this looks to be a lesson about names and naming places, which is a great link between human and physical Geography, it is, in a reasoning sense, about the child’s view of the world and whether it has yet separated into a clear awareness of the internal aspects of the world of the child  (consciousness) and the external aspects (the real world).  This too was the focus of Piaget’s research and like him and his partner Inhelder, you will use naming to get an insight into that. It was a good introductory lesson to check out, for our children, whether they have become wholly aware of the clear distinction between their experiences of the world and the world itself, between the uniqueness of their consciousness and the world that is not self aware and experiencing in a similar way. In young children they may not have yet made this distinction. The challenge in episode 1: ·         What are the names of the things in these picture cards? (sheep, very young baby, house, moon, tree, lap top computer, bicycle, dog, book, cartoon character) ·         Do any of the things in the pictures know their names? The challenge in episode 2: ·         Can a place change its name? ·         Can we decide that London is now called something else?   The challenge in episode 3: Context: A city has displayed the statue of a man, Joe Blogg,  for over 50 years.  Blogg was born there and made significant wealth through trading.  He donated large amounts of money to the city and set up schools and charities for those less fortunate than himself.  As the city grew, Blogg Avenue, Blogg Street,  The great Blogg Concert Hall,  Blogg Primary and Blogg Academy were all named after him. Knowledge of the man’s history emerges more clearly over time.  It becomes known that his trading practices involved cruelty and discrimination.   ·         Should Blogg’s statue be taken down by the city council?   The statue is eventually taken down by citizens during a public protest and the city council decide not to put it back.   ·         Should the many schools, street names and public buildings that carry the same name as the statue now change their name?

  What was especially striking was the emotional impact that these lessons had on the children, investing them not only with new, more powerful thinking but a motivation and sense of agency to do something with it.   I think that this in part came from teaching which was not about a safe risk taking environment, but rather somewhere where offering an idea is not risk taking at all, just part of what one does. This sequence from an observation of the lesson, ‘Trees’ demonstrates that ideas were explored, rather than accepted and this allowed new ideas to emerge with greater power, an underlying this there is a progression in the nature of the reasoning.   "Trees are there to give us stuff." "We give them carbon dioxide and they give us oxygen so they need us as much as we need them." "But they don't know they do it, they are just natural. It's like us breathing we don't do it in purpose." "I don't really think trees are for anything."   And   "Trees don't actually have brains, but they have to have some sort of thought process, because when its winter the trees drop their leaves and when they grow their roots feel things underground and they communicate through their roots." "I think we would pay more attention to trees if they had more human features, like eyes and a mouth and stuff. I guess that would be like chopping down a wooden version of a human."   Engagement for our pupils came from stimulating their curiosity and interest about trees, names, rainfall, the origin and destination of a T shirt…..and ensuring they felt safe exploring these.  The materials offered that opportunity, and these LT trained teachers capitalised on it.  We also realised that we, and the teachers, were on a learning curve along with pupils, but it was not just the structure of LT lessons we had to take on board, we also looked at our relationship with learners and what matters to them.     Our next blog will look at how the development of the lessons had an impact on The Let’s Think Forum, the teachers and the schools. [post_title] => Bringing the benefits of Let’s Think to Primary Geography Part 1 [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => bringing-the-benefits-of-lets-think-to-primary-geography-part-1 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-02-15 10:58:26 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-02-15 10:58:26 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1499 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 10 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1545 [post_author] => 2386 [post_date] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_date_gmt] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_content] => What does a professional development model for Let’s Think look like that seeks to effect whole school change and build internal capacity?  I have spent the last two terms considering this problem as I work with a primary school in West Wales to support them in embedding the Let’s Think Maths approach across their school. My thought process began by considering the challenges of whole school implementation: what makes it tricky, and why does it often take so long?  I identified three key challenges.

1. School budgets are tight. I can only spend three two day sessions at the school across the academic year (six days in total), and only a small handful of teachers can be released to work with me on those six days.
2. One of the challenges of Let’s Think Maths in the primary years is that teachers do not feel confident about their own mathematics knowledge and understanding.  This means that they tend to only teach the lessons that they have seen a tutor like me modelling and explaining.  This can leave them with a very small repertoire of lessons, given the professional development time I have with them.
3. Teachers only really feel confident with a lesson when they have taught it twice, but in the primary years, teachers tend to only teach their own class.  This means they may not develop confidence in a lesson until they teach it for the second time, the following year.

These challenges led me to consider reframing the way I think about the teachers who do attend the professional development sessions I led.  What if I am not simply preparing them to teach Let’s Think in their own classes, but also to teach Let’s Think to other teachers in the school?  To this end, teachers from different year groups were identified to take part.  The school was asked to find the time to enable these teachers to not only teach these lessons to their own classes, but to team teach each lesson with a partner teacher. This latter activity also resolved the issue of teachers taking two years to feel confident teaching a lesson: now each lesson would be taught twice in the same year, leading (hopefully) to a quicker and more confident understanding of the lessons and the approach. This approach means the teachers identified to take part in the face-to-face professional development sessions need to be a very particular kind of teacher.  They have to be willing to take risks with their practice: Let’s Think requires them to fundamentally rethink some of their ingrained teaching habits, to try something new, probably to experience initial failure, before redeveloping a new kind of expertise.  They have to have a collaborative mindset: they will need to induct their colleagues carefully into the approach, not expecting too much of them and being sensitive to teachers who might find Let’s Think very different to their normal maths teaching.  They have to be generous: they will have to spend time with colleagues supporting them to understand the approach and helping them to plan lessons.  They have to have a positive mindset: we want them to champion the approach in the school, so that colleagues believe in its potential, and they will need to respond positively to feedback from me as tutor during the live teaching we do in professional development sessions, so that they can develop expertise in the approach as quickly as possible. During each of my two day visits, I built in time to deliver some short introductory sessions to all teachers at their weekly staff meeting.  This gave all teachers an overview of the theory behind Let’s Think and the principles of the pedagogy and lesson design.  Hopefully, this would help them make sense of the team teaching they did with their colleagues. Finally, I made use of two key sets of resources to support teachers who would be working with other colleagues in my absence.  Firstly, I used the library of lesson simulations the Let’s Think Maths tutor team have been putting together on the Let’s Think Community website.  In essence, this is a way to access a tutor explaining a lesson through an interactive video, an activity that can be done collaboratively with colleagues.  This is a way to develop expertise via tutor support but without the need for the tutor to be present.  It would be a tricky resource for those new to Let’s Think to use, but can be very supportive to teachers who understand Let’s Think but want to get to know a new lesson.   Secondly, I asked the teachers I was supporting to read chapters from the Let’s Think Handbook.  This book explains the Piagetian and Vygotskian theories that underpin the design of Let’s Think lessons, and also helps teachers get a deep understanding of the core pedagogical principles: concrete preparation, cognitive conflict, social construction and metacognition.  This would help them explain to colleagues why they were implementing the approach, the difference it makes to learning and the rationale behind its design. It is early days with the professional development programme - we have the right teachers in place, they have begun to team teach, and they are definitely developing their own teaching expertise.  What is important to me is to leave the school in a place where they no longer need my services as a tutor - in essence, to make myself redundant.  That is the true test of whole school Let’s Think implementation, and I am looking forward to seeing it at the school.       [post_title] => Let’s Think: building capacity, developing whole school practice [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => lets-think-building-capacity-developing-whole-school-practice [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-03-06 11:07:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://letsthink.org.uk/?p=1545 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 73 [max_num_pages] => 8 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => 1 [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => 1 [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => 3097975801bc61d12b7951b46214d852 [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [allow_query_attachment_by_filename:protected] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )