A small cadre of enthusiastic teachers took the initial online Thinking Moves training with Roger in 2021. 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 language of Thinking Moves has become part of discourse in school. The subtle interplay between cognition and emotion has enabled staff to seamlessly manipulate metacognition into a tool to support emotional regulation and prosocial behaviour. This means that metacognition is not seen simply as twenty-six petals to sprinkle throughout a lesson, but instead metacognition is seen as the roots that anchor all interactions. The way we think, speak to each other, behave with each other, use materials, interact with the world . . . is rooted in metacognition. At Fortune Kindergarten, in Shanghai, we have been introducing Thinking Moves to our K2 classes since the beginning of this school year. As the year has progressed in K2 classes, we have been integrating the language for these Thinking Moves into our P4C (Philosophy for Children) enquiries and regular classroom lessons. Along with asking children: “What did we just learn?” or “What did we just do?”, we can now ask children, to think about the way they are learning and help them focus on the kinds of thinking they are employing, by asking: “What kind of thinking did we do?” and “How did this help us learn?”She also said that in Chinese IB classes they were using Thinking Moves in their Theory of Knowledge (TOK) classes. Metacognition is embedded throughout continuous provision and is accessed by all children through personalised interactions. Enhancements are offered across the curriculum and metacognition forms a vehicle on which targeted teaching is delivered. For example, by combining thinking moves together, we have created thinking grooves. By using certain moves together, the flow of thinking is explicit.

We have always been a leading provider of training in Philosophy for Children (P4C) in the UK, but we are now partnering organisations in four continents to promote our unique approach to teaching and learning: ‘ P4C Plus’. Our thinking ability is what makes us distinctively human. Yet we have no generally accepted approach to teaching thinking – and no common vocabulary to describe different ways of thinking. This, when you think about it, is extraordinary. Imagine trying to teach or learn maths if we did not have commonly accepted terms such as add, subtract, multiply and divide. Thinking Moves A – Z is a vocabulary of 26 types of thinking. The Moves are understandable, comprehensive and memorable. They make metacognition simple for teachers and learners, bringing big benefits in school and everyday life. Watch this video to learn more… Stephen Walshe argues that children, even children as young as 5 years of age, can be introduced to a vocabulary that helps them access their thinking. Metacognition has been identified as a powerful lever for learning. This greater awareness of one’s own thought processes and the ability to manage them better is known as metacognition. Approaches that develop metacognition in schools are recognised to have a high impact on learning. According to the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF):

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DialogueWorks is an educational company that has specialised for nearly 30 years in the advancement of more thoughtful pedagogy. As soon as I started using them, it became a central part on how I structure notes, plans, and answers. They help with prioritising and putting together GROUPS of information, creating links between one topic and another. Our primary school which follows the IB curriculum has been implementing Thinking Moves A-Z metacognition strategies since 2019. We have seen tremendous growth in our students’ ability to explain and evaluate their own thinking as well as evaluate and appreciate the contribution of their peers. This in turn has strengthened our students’ ability to reason and make progress in inquiry within the PYP framework. A sixth form teacher in Hertfordshire asked their students how they have been using Thinking Moves…

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. 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.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. 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. 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.