Download the full Thinking Skills overview here as a Word document.
Thinking skills are the particular ways in which people apply their minds to solving problems:
‘What the term refers to is the human capacity to think in conscious ways to achieve certain purposes. Such processes include remembering, questioning, forming concepts, planning, reasoning, imagining, solving problems, making decisions and judgements, translating thoughts into words and so on. Thinking skills are ways in which humans exercise the sapiens part of being homo sapiens.’ (Robert Fisher)
Thinking skills are intended to challenge pupils to think more deeply and more widely, in more systematic and sustained ways. Evidence from research shows that specific interventions can improve pupils’ thinking and intelligence.
We consider thinking to be how pupils make sense of learning and that developing thinking skills will help our pupils to get more out of learning and life. We consider that they enable pupils to turn experience into learning, inside and outside of the classroom, with a focus on knowing ‘how’ rather than ‘that’.
It is the intention that this process of ‘learning to learn’ empowers pupils and provides an excellent base for future learning.
