parent’s guide to thinking skills
TRANSCRIPT
Parent’s Guide to Thinking Skills:Hats, Maps, Keys and Habits of Mind
So your child attends a thinking school?
What does this actually mean?
As you know, New Horizons Children’s Academy is part of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT).
Many of the schools within our trust are accredited Thinking Schools. Being a Thinking School means we regularly think about everything that takes place. We
explicitly teach students and staff to think reflective, critically and creatively by using The Thinking Skills.
Essentially, we provide them with tools they can use throughout life in order to look at a topic from various perspectives, achieve and enjoy learning.
These are the six starting points to becoming a Thinking School:
The following document will provide you with ways to support at home so that you can help your child with school work and encourage them to use the thinking tools to think for themselves and reflect and monitor on their own progress and learning.
A Thinking School
Thinking Skills: Hats
Lets start with Thinking Hats which are perhaps the most well known Thinking Skill. Thinking Hats can help you to look at problems from different perspectives, but one at a time, to avoid confusion.
We use the white hat when we are thinking
about facts and information, figures
and dates. The white hat is the neutral
stance.
You use the yellow hat when you are thinking
of positives, being optimistic and thinking
about the benefit or value of something.
When we use the black hat, we are looking at
negatives and downsides. We are
thinking about possible dangers. This is our
cautious hat.
When we are being creative, we are
wearing our green hat. The green hat is for
possibilities and finding alternatives. It is for
new ideas.
The red hat is our feelings. When we
wear our red hat, we are considering our
emotions, our intuition and our hunches about
something.
The blue hat is for processes and control.
The blue hat is for breaking things down into steps and looking
into the next steps.
The purple hat is the hat we have created at New Horizons. It is for editing and used when
we make our purple pen edits and corrections.
Because this slide is delivering information
and facts, I’ve put a white hat in the corner
How you may see hats used in a lesson:
Because this slide shows ideas and
alternative ways to use hats, it
demonstrates green hat thinking
Thinking Skills: Keys
Thinking keys were suggested by Tony Ryan (1990) to stimulate different types of thinking. The keys help ‘unlock’ critical and creative thinking. It can be used in any subject and although some keys make sound similar, they can result in very
different results! We use 21 different thinkers keys at New Horizons:
The brainstorming key is about contemplating solutions to problems and coming up with any ideas you can.
Use each left of the alphabet to write a list
on a topic. For example, use the
alphabet key to write a list of animals. Start on
A and finish on Z!
Students are asked to consider of write
questions that begin with ‘what if…’
The question key is when you are provided
the answer and you must come up with
possible questions that would provide that
answer.
This is a great key for self evaluation. It is an
acronym for Bigger, Add or Replace. So you
consider what you could do bigger, what you could add or what
you could replace.
The picture key is when you are provided with a picture which appears to be totally unrelated to your learning and
you have to think creatively to make a link with your topic
For the full list of explanations of all the thinking keys. Look here:
https://www.tsatrust.org.uk/what-is-a-thinking-school/thinking-keys/
Thinking Skills: Keys
At New Horizons, we have created our own key: The Perspectives Key which has been designed to help pupils think about an issue from various perspectives and
start to make links between their subjects. For example, how may a scientist have a different perspective to an artist when studying animals?
Thinking Skills: Keys
How you may see keys used in a lesson:
We use visual mapping based on Hyerle and Alper (2011). These thinking maps provide children with a template or a method to communicate and organise their thinking. Each map has a frame of
reference for further information. The maps are a shared common language across all subjects which reduce children’s cognitive load so they can focus on the activity and learning, rather than
how to record it. In the next slides, we will go through each type of Thinking Map and how you can support your child with them
Visual Mapping:
A circle map is for brain storming or defining something – they are often used to recap what somebody previously has learnt. Think of them like a brainstorm or a mind-map. For
example, you might be learning about fractions so you’d put fractions in the middle, in the ‘donut’, you’d write everything you know about fractions and in the frame of reference, you
might write questions you have on fractions.
Circle Map
Frame of reference for
extra information,
questions and further analysis
Title of the circle map
Pupils answers or ideas in the
‘donut’
A bubble map is used to describe. Each bubble has an adjective in it. You need to think about what adjectives are most suitable. You may use a bubble map to describe a scene or identify how a person may be feeling. You could use it to identify the traits of a character or
to describe a picture.
A bubble map
Frame of reference for putting the adjectives
into a sentence, writing questions or any other analysis.
The name of what you are describing (it could be any
noun) e.g. London, a
character in a book or even
yourselfPut one adjective
in each bubble
A tree map is used to classify or sort information into categories or sub-categories. For example, you could use a tree map to say the positives (yellow hat) and negatives (black hat) of a situation
or to classify different types of animals (mammals, birds etc.) or materials (metal, wood) then under the sub-title, add more information, for example put the different properties of that
material.
Tree Map
Frame of reference for
extra information, questions or
key vocabulary
Title
Sub-title of different
categories
Information on the
category
A double bubble map is used to find similarities and differences. It is like a Venn diagram, comparing and contrasting two things (objects,
characters, subjects, animals etc.)
A Double Bubble Map
Frame of reference for extra information, questions and further
analysis
One topicthat you arecomparing
One topic that you are comparing
A difference which is
unique to the topic on this
side
Something that is similar about the
two topics
This is a map which you are probably more familiar with: it shows the sequence or order of events. You could write out the plot of a story or the
steps in problem solving. Each box can have a sub-box which show the sub-stages or extra details of that box
A Flow Map
Frame of reference for
further analysis such as questions
you have, language you’ve magpies or a hat
reflection
This is for each step of a
plan or process
A multi-flow map shows what caused an event and what the impact of the event are or what might happen next. This can be used to discuss cause and effects, identify consequences or
describe changes. It’s a way to analyse events or relationships, such as what caused World War 2 and what the impact of World War 2 was. Similarly, it could be used to identify the causes of
deforestation and what the impact of deforestation is.
A multi-flow map
Frame of reference for
further analysis
The event or situation your
focusing on
The causes of the event
Effects of the event
A brace map is used to identify parts or sub parts of a whole. It helps us to understand the structure of something, for example, the parts of a flower, we could break it down to the stem, the roots etc. then we could break each of those sub-parts down further into their sub-parts. It
is great to analyse physical objects and see the parts which make up a whole.
A Brace Map
Frame of reference for
further analysis
Idea broken down into small parts
The concept or object
Frame of reference for
further analysis
A bridge map is used for seeing analogies. It is used to identify the relationship or to interpret things, such as symbols. There is always a relating factor, for example it may be ‘means the same as’. So, if you are looking at Roman Numerals. You may write ‘6’ on the top, the relating factor will be ‘is the same as’
and you may write ‘VI’ on the bottom. It doesn’t only have to be for things that are the same though, you could have the relating factor as ‘opposites’ so on the top you could have ‘day’ is the opposite of ‘night’ –
this one is easiest to understand when you see an example on the next slide.
A Bridge Map
One concept
The second concept or
analogy you’re
comparing it to
The factor that is relating the two
concepts
The relating factor______________
Examples of Maps in Action:
Examples of Maps in Action:
As a Thinking School, we have drawn on the work of Art Costa and Bena Kallickon the power of habits and the strong implications it has for developing
students behaviours and successful dispositions as they journal through school. The Habits of Mind are 16 dispositions and behaviours, identified by Costa and
Kallick, which help students successfully approach problems and challenges they encounter in the classroom and in everyday life. The aim is to explicitly teach the
children these dispositions and reflect on them so they can become more resilient and develop the personal skills in order to solve problems and be
successful.
Developing Disposition:
Our 16 Habits of Mind
This is the Wobble Monster:
We have the ‘wobble’ when things are a bit tricky and we are out of our comfort zone.We encourage pupils to reflect on this and recognise it because having that ‘wobble’ feeling inside when things are a bit difficult is a sign we are learning something new!
Reflective Questioning
One of the elements of our Thinking school is that we use Q-Matrix questions. This helps learners become more aware of their own learning. The Question Matrix was developed by Chuck Weiderhold and is a set of question starters designed to develop higher-order thinking. The questions move from literal questions such as when, what and where questions to identify what they’ve understood. The questions then move to inferential questions to finds clues from the information. Then they move towards extended questions to give
students an opportunity to extend on the information.
Further reading if you are interested to Learn more:
• https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofsocialsciencesandinternationalstudies/education/research/groupsandnetworks/cedu/downloads/publications/What_is_a_Thinking_School.pdf
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Student-Successes-Thinking-Maps%C2%AE-School-Based/dp/1412990890