NACE Associate Amanda Hubball, Deputy Head and More Able Lead at Challenge Award-accredited Alfreton Nursery School, shares five key approaches to embed metacognition in the early years. 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 However, when it comes to the skills of thinking and learning, there is no common language and the concepts are shrouded in misconception. Do children learn visually, kinaesthetically . . . ? Are there different levels to learning? Based on the belief that we are all thinking and learning all of the time, Thinking Moves has been implemented at Alfreton Nursery School. Thinking Moves provides the language to explain the process of thinking and has thus provided a common framework on which to master learning. 1. Develop and model a shared vocabulary Show you how to enrich inquiry based learning programmes, such as Philosophy for Children (P4C), by incorporating Thinking Moves;

They make you think more in depth and make your notes and writing more memorable and make them more interesting.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. Metacognition and self-regulation approaches have consistently high levels of impact, with pupils making an average of seven months’ additional progress.”

Metacognition is everywhere and in everyone from birth. It was when I started researching metacognition that I realised just how amazing brains and thought processes are from birth to five. I genuinely think that from birth to five our minds make more rapid development than in any other time in our lives. Even from age 3-5, a child’s brain will make more metacognitive progression than that of a student undertaking a PhD. It is this that led me to create a metacognition approach to teaching, and my complete daily and weekly approach in my preschool class is now based on metacognition. In particular, an approach called Thinking Moves.Comprehensible. Simple activities are provided to allow each move to be practised and to allow people to make meaning of the move. This is supported by a list of synonyms and associated vocabulary for each move that helps people to build a more nuanced understanding of the acts of thinking it denotes. For example, to think AHEAD is also to ‘predict’, to ‘aim’, to ‘look forward’, to ‘expect’, to ‘hope’ and to ‘target’. Special synonyms for EYFS children are provided; The main framework is PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHING-AND-LEARNING (PTL). Its six interwoven strands derive from the traditions of philosophy and P4C, but draw new power from six other pedagogical approaches developed in the last half-century. Following a recent Thinking Moves training, the International Baccalaureate coordinator at Wuxi United International School (WUIS), in China, returned to her school and began introducing the Thinking Moves in English and Chinese classes in middle and upper School. If we can put names to the cognitive moves we make – if we can recognise and become aware of them in ourselves and others – then we can reflect on their purpose and value. If we can do that, we can begin to make conscious decisions to apply them – to take control of our own thought processes. That might lead to better thinking, better learning and wiser decisions – a better way of being! 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.

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. I have found them useful in understanding how information can be applied into exam answers and broken down into categories, such as ZOOMING OUT to get the wider picture or ZOOMING IN to focus on specific details. Thinking Moves training provides an accessible language with icons linked to Sign Language to explicitly teach metacognition to students of all ages. 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. A brilliant animation from the year 6 students at Sandringham Primary, Newham on P4C and the 4Cs. Worth 7 minutes’ of anyone’s time!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