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Embedding thinking skills

This post is about my attempt to embed thinking skills in my teaching - primarily as a way of improving analytical writing.  

The ideas contained are not new, but I think they are part of a helpful structure. I also think they could be improved by the input of a larger number of teachers, so I’ve published it here. If you like the structure, and think it might help you, please use it, but please share something of the experience here, so others can use what you have learnt. Although the initial work has been done in English lessons, I am equally, if not more interested, in whether it can work in other subjects. A cross-curricular approach would undoubtedly have more impact.   

Initial idea and implementation in English lessons

It started when I watched this Morton and Webster YouTube clip, where they demonstrate how to analyse a text using higher-order thinking skills. By creating categories of interpretation, they are able to come up with more sophisticated, high-quality comments about the texts being examined.
 

I thought it was useful strategy that would support my students in a part of analysis they can struggle with; pulling together evidence from across a text to support the main point made i.e. spotting patterns. After trying it with some success, I began to think about how it could be developed. Perhaps reference to thinking skills could improve my analytical writing by linking the process to thinking skills and providing explicit strategies to progress. I also hoped this could move teaching away from a focus on various Point Evidence Explain (PEE, PEED, PEEDRAW, PEEER, PETAL, PETER etc. etc.) writing frames which I find don't always help students take their ideas beyond basic reformulation.

As an English Literature and Language teacher, I put together a bank of prompts/strategies to help students move through these thinking skills when analysing texts. The first one I made looked like this, and was designed for students of A Level English Language. I should stress, that we dealt with strategies over a period of time – didn’t just say: here you are, use this!

The slightly adjusted frame below, I used for students of English Literature at KS4. The skills are similar, but here I wanted any evaluation to be a test of their own judgement, as well as modes of address within the text they were studying. Probably worth noting, that I originally left out the applying section, because the taxonomy was designed to help students organise their analysis in written form, and I felt the applying was part of testing their initial knowledge and not relevant. However, I brought it back so that students became more familiar with the full progression of thinking skills.  

These frameworks have been aimed at KS4 and KS5, but the group with which these prompts were most successful, was a mid-level Key Stage 3 class.

Benefits of using this approach

·        From the outset, I felt that discussion about texts quickly demonstrated higher levels of thinking, with some students moving from feature spotting, to making discriminating observations about the most relevant ideas.

·        As an AFL tool it has been really useful, able to address the “Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?” questions in a way that develops their skills in the subject, rather than being about one piece of knowledge.

·        When using it as a basis for feedback it is helpful and, I felt, motivating to move away from levels and other assessment criteria. In some ways, the goal is to challenge and push yourself and do things which mark out higher levels of human ability, not just being about getting a good mark. However, it should be noted, that I make explicit reference to the fact that the higher levels of thinking generally correlate with the higher levels of a mark scheme.
 

·       Making students explicitly aware of the skills shared with different subjects. Demonstrating that what we do in English can help them in History or Biology, and vice versa.

Where to next?

I have included the resources I have made here. This includes a basic display and the initial frameworks and prompts I have developed, as well as a few other notes and ideas. If you think it might work, please help yourself. But please share your results here. If you are a Maths teacher and you develop a range of prompts, please add them. If you are a Science teacher and you can see how this can be practically applied to your subject, please chuck something on here. If you are an English teacher and you can improve this, please get something on here and make my job easier!