From the second we are born we begin to learn. Our brain begins to create physical, and metaphorical, connections and doesn’t stop. By the time a child reaches age three, their brains, thoughts, knowledge and curiosity, are a whole world away from where they were just 36 months earlier. Can any of you truly say that in the last 36 months you have learnt as much or as rapidly as those children did from birth to three? I certainly can’t. During a teaching career of over 20 years, there have been very few initiatives that have had as great a positive impact on my practice as Thinking Moves A to Z. It has transformed the way I teach and the way I encourage my pupils to learn. Having said this, Thinking Moves didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know about teaching and learning; I have exerted very little effort in tweaking the methods I use to teach. It simply gave a name to every method of thinking that we all use in our everyday life; a label that I could direct children to use to help them with their learning, triggered by a memorable action children find easy to respond to. In every single lesson, I use LOOK/LISTEN. It is important to do this because we need to know what the teacher is showing us and telling us so that we can learn to do it ourselves” – Riona aged 7 Students at Sandringham Primary, Newham, London could remember all 26 Thinking Moves in their very first session with facilitator, Paul Kell

As a KNSTE tutor and Thinking Moves trainer I modelled the use of the Move CONNECT to support the generalisation of concepts connected with changes of state using the activity illustrated below. Gradually it became clear that mathematical skills progression was being facilitated by the conscious application of metacognition. As data below evidences, fewer children struggled to move beyond barriers to learning in maths than in other areas. Thinking Moves A – Z provides a vocabulary for thinking. The moves themselves are not new – we all use them in our learning and our life every day. But now we have a way of talking about how we think, and that gives us a means to work on improving the effectiveness of our thinking. The ‘ Plus’ consists of two powerful frameworks that enable the skills and dispositions developed in P4C, by both teachers and learners, to be transferred into any subject and at any level. 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.DialogueWorks is an educational company that has specialised for nearly 30 years in the advancement of more thoughtful pedagogy. We can then reflect on the Thinking Moves or a particular Move we have used, like, thinking ahead and ask ourselves, when it is important to use such a move and how we can get better at this kind of thinking. Thinking Moves and sign language Obviously, the real benefit of Thinking Moves is increasing the children's ability to explain their thinking and it is encouraging from visiting lessons, listening to their discussions and looking at our students' written responses that the moves are becoming ingrained and part of the language of learning in our school. Our next step is to evaluate this process further and to develop the role of metacognition and self-regulation into our developing social and emotional learning programme and the evolution of agency focused curriculum, which we have begun this year. I use Thinking Moves in my essay planning. I DIVIDE and CONNECT points for/against. I WEIGH UP and JUSTIFY in assess questions. I use KEYWORD, GROUP, and EXEMPLIFY in my revision when making flashcards for different questions. I also use ZOOM IN / OUT and SIZE when writing about issues going from a local to a national or international scale.

Thinking Moves A – Z provides a vocabulary for thinking. The moves themselves are not new – we all use them in our learning and our life every day. But now we have a way of talking about how we think, and that gives us a means to work on improving the effectiveness of our thinking.’ 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. Roger Sutcliffe had been focussed on teaching thinking in one way or another for 40+ years – as an English teacher, then a Maths teacher, then a Philosophy for Children trainer, and for some years as a consultant for Thinking Schools International.

Ichen’s stone ball

Our strategies and techniques support the development of more reflective and skilful teachers and learners, who listen carefully and critically to each other, and form better judgments, both in and out of the classroom. DialogueWorks exists to enrich and transform education, and ultimately society, through the practice of P4C (Philosophy for Children and Communities), enhanced by our two innovative and powerful frameworks: Philosophical Teaching-and-Learning (PTL) and Thinking Moves A – Z: Metacognition Made Simple (TM).

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.The simplicity, they are basic words that seem quite obvious but they have made a big difference because I can think about organising my thoughts and answers explicitly.

We offer a range of supporting resources to help you build Thinking Movesinto your teaching and learning:Comprehensive. All cognitive moves (that Roger is aware of!) are encompassed in the A-Z. They are applicable across all areas of the curriculum and all phases from early years to secondary. And they are just as useful in everyday life as they are in school. We are all making these Moves subconsciously. What we need to do to help students of all ages to think better is to surface these subconscious moves and talk about how we can become better at them. Doing this helps students not only gain more control over their own thinking, but also helps them identify the moves others may be making to try to influence or control their thinking. Transferable skills