Thinking Moves A-Z: Metacognition Made Simple

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Teachers have expressed their enjoyment incorporating the Thinking moves in their classes. They have remarked about how easily they can be embedded into any topic and how students are now able to use them naturally and without prompting. New teachers to our school are always very impressed at how well the students can remember them and how the students are able to continue using them over the span of their primary school journey.” A simple activity where students have to choose between a number of objects can be followed by having them reflect on the kinds of thinking they were doing during the activity. The activity just mentioned might involve the following Moves: ‘looking and listening’, ‘weighing up choices’, ‘justifying your first choice’, ‘arguing for and against your first choice’, ‘weighing choices again’, and maybe, in the light of the last move, ‘changing you mind about your initial choice’. Embedding metacognition in the early years supports children to master their own cognition and gives them a voice for life. Thinking Moves A-Z was developed by Roger Sutcliffe, the man largely responsible for establishing the practice of Philosophy for Children in the UK, together with his colleagues at Dialogue Works. The A-Z provides a shared language with which we – students and teachers – can describe our thinking. Without such a language it is difficult to reflect on the cognitive moves we make and their effectiveness, and to share those reflections with others.

The integration of the symbols into the classroom environment has ensured that there is conscious intent to implement metacognition within all areas of the curriculum. Teachers use the symbols as prompts. Children use the symbols to help them articulate their thinking and as an aid to knowing what strategies will help them further.The variety and depth of them. When you think about what thinking move is being used there is always a perfect one to describe your actions. When looking at the curriculum and skill progression across the school, it has been helpful to consider which Thinking Moves explicitly support advancement. For children to progress in their acquisition of new concepts, they need to know clearly how to access their learning. Within our planning and assessment systems, areas of metacognitive focus have been identified. 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 Of course, this complex activity involves more than one cognitive move. We are also using the Move DIVIDE in the sense of making a distinction, and numerous other Moves from the A-Z. At a more advanced level we use the notion of Thinking Grooves to consider the sequences of Moves we make in different contexts. But for the purposes of teaching for early metacognition it may be useful to focus the children’s attention on the idea of connection and generalisation, and to encourage them to reflect both on what they have learned about changes of state and on how making connections between different examples of a phenomenon / concept is a useful way of developing our understanding. We might even be able to support the pupils to CONNECT this use of the Move to other contexts in other subjects where its use might be profitable, so increasing the likelihood that they will make the deliberate decision to apply the Move independently.

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. 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 ‘ 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.Thanks for the amazing workshop. On fire here today in school. My brain is consciously thinking of the moves I am making. The way the moves are designed, they are a catalyst for other skills acquisition.” Rajashree Basu 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.