At New Horizons, we use a variety of Thinking Skills Tools to develop children’s metacognitionn and meta-memory and to support independence in their learning. This helps learners to become more aware of their own learning, and develop more responsibility which will give them the thinking skills to become life-long learners. These include: Thinking Maps, Thinking Hats and Q Matrix. These tools are designed to help our children to think more critically about their learning, encourage ownership The Thinking Maps are an ideal tool to organise their information and ideas and ultimately make connections that will help to further their understanding within a topic. Thinking Hats encourage children to analyse and question the work they have completed and decide what their next steps will be in their learning. The Q Matrix is a is a set of question starters designed to develop higher-order thinking and to question the world around them.
Seeking context – Circle Map
Thinking Process: Defining in context
Used for: Thought showers and for showing prior knowledge about a topic by providing context information.
Sequencing – Flow Map
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Thinking Process: Sequencing, identifying stages in a process, identifying the stages and sub stages of an event (or order of numbers, operations, steps)
Used for: Sequencing and ordering information with major stages of an event and sub stages.
Describing Attributes – Bubble Map
Thinking Process: Describe qualities associated with a specific item, person, idea or event.
Used for: Developing pupils’ abilities to identify qualities and use descriptive words
Comparing and Contrasting – Double Bubble Map
Thinking Process: Comparing and contrasting.
Used for: Identifying unique and common qualities.
Cause and Effcets of Events – Multi-Flow Map
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Thinking Process: Identifying interrelated causes and effects of events.
Used for: Showing and analysing reasons and impacts relationships.
Physical Relationship – Brace Map
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Thinking Process: Structure analysis. Part-whole reasoning of physical objects and their parts.
Used for: Analysing physical objects.
Classification – Tree Map
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Thinking Process: Categorising/ grouping/ classifying.
Used for: Classifying things and ideas.
Creating and Interpreting Analogies – Bridge Map
Thinking Process: Seeing analogies by identifying similarities between relationships.
Used for: Developing a deep understanding of concepts by selecting a relating factor which fits both sides of an analogy.
Thinking Hats
Q Matrix
Q matrix example