Within our maths enhancements we use the maths QUEST approach. A session begins with a Question, e.g. “How many will we have if we add one more to this group?” Children Use their mathematical understanding and Explain what they will need to do to solve the problem. The answer is Sized, “Are there more or less now?”, and then this is Tested to establish the consistency of the answer. Maths QUESTs now underpin our mathematical enhancements, allowing children to consciously use maths and metacognition simultaneously. 5. Embed within progression planning This greater awareness of one’s own thought processes and the ability to manage them better is known as metacognition. Approaches that develop metacognition in schools are recognised to have a high impact on learning. According to the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF): For example, within literacy we have raised our focus on the Thinking Move Infer. For children to gather information from a story is a key skill for future progression. Within science we emphasise the need to Test and within music we support children to Respond. Progression planning now has a clear focus on cognitive challenge, as well as subject knowledge.

The thing I love most about Thinking Moves is that it enables my pupils to take control of their own learning and access learning opportunities independently. Once they are familiar with the 26 different ways of thinking (and their innumerable synonyms), pupils spontaneously use this knowledge to independently apply all types of thinking to all scenarios of their studies. To me, Thinking Moves A to Z is emphatically empowering!” - KS2 Class Teacher, Liverpool Research by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has shown that effective strategies for metacognition and self-regulation:So for those of you who already focus heavily on characteristics of learning, schema play, a curiosity approach or loose parts and open-ended play, guess what – you are already most of the way there to having a metacognition approach to teaching. All you need to do now is learn a bit more about metacognition and let that reframe the way you think about learning. Embedding metacognition in the early years supports children to master their own cognition and gives them a voice for life. For anyone wanting to explore a metacognition approach to early-years practice then Roger’s Thinking Moves A-Z and my book, Beautiful Thinking, are a great place to start but you also have the tools already available to you right now. Just take a peek inside the early-years framework, Development Matters, and you will find that the whole of the Characteristics of Learning are metacognition skills.

After a little modelling such as that described above, it was over to our ATs to make their own connections between the A-Z and the curriculum, and they rose to the challenge wonderfully well. The Education Endowment Foundation found that “evidence suggests the use of ‘metacognitive strategies’– which get pupils to think about their own learning - can be worth the equivalent of an additional +7 months’ progress when used well. However, while the potential impact of these approaches is very high, particularly for disadvantaged pupils, less is known about how to apply them effectively in the classroom.” I think that this may be because many people either have never heard of metacognition or they believe it to be more academic and confusing than it really is. In reality, it is something we do all the time and every day. Students at Sandringham Primary, Newham, London could remember all 26 Thinking Moves in their very first session with facilitator, Paul Kell Our thinking ability is what makes us distinctively human. Yet we have no generally accepted approach to teaching thinking – and no common vocabulary to describe different ways of thinking. This, when you think about it, is extraordinary. Imagine trying to teach or learn maths if we did not have commonly accepted terms such as add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Thinking Moves Consolidation

We are an international primary school that has around 600 students and 65 teachers and teaching assistants from all over the world with a significant number learning English as a second language. Our curriculum for Maths and English follows the UK curriculum with the other subjects being taught through topics using the International Primary Curriculum. At Alfreton Nursery School metacognition has been systematically embedded across the whole curriculum for the last three years. Through the use of an approach constructed by Roger Sutcliffe ( DialogueWorks) called Thinking Moves, we’ve successfully implemented an innovative approach to learning.