| What are Thinking Skills? |
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Thinking Skills are conscious mental processes that you use to do things like: classify, evaluate, sort, question, analyse, sequence, solve problems, create, explore, enquire, decide, and ask questions.
Researchers at Newcastle University, UK found well over 50 different classifications of thinking skills.
They made a really useful summary of them though:
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Information Gathering Skills include:
- Sensing – seeing, hearing, touching
- Retrieving – memory skills
Basic Understanding Skills include:
- Organising gathered information
- Forming concepts
- Linking ideas together
Productive Thinking Skills include:
- Using gathered information and basic understanding
- Applying, solving problems, making decisions, creating, analysing, evaluating
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| Strategic and Reflective Thinking Skills |
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This is simply thinking about thinking - Planning, monitoring and evaluating your use of the cognitive skills above.
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| Assessing Thinking Skills |
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Here’s an interesting questionnaire. It links two broad types of thinking - analytic (left brain) and holistic (right brain) - with learning styles.
Follow the instructions and find out the balance of your brain, between left & right, auditory & visual: Interactive Questionnaire. Thinking Classroom has tried and failed to find the source of this activity - if it's yours, please get in touch and let us know if you're happy for it to be on the site.
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I’ve been using Thinking Skills in classrooms and training rooms for over a decade and have written widely and practically on the subject.
I often run non-closure days in school to demonstrate simple techniques for building Thinking Skills into the curriculum.
All my training is shot-through with opportunities to think, reflect, create and evaluate and demonstrates how easy it can be to bring Thinking Skills alive for all ages.
For more information about Thinking Skills INSET for your school please contact us.
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| Thinking Skills Resources |
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| (Hidden) Teachers Personalised Resources |
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| (Hidden) Parents Personalised Resources |
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| (Hidden) Trainers Personalised Resources |
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| (Hidden) Consultants Personalised Resources |
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