Parent’s Guide to Thinking Skills:Hats, Maps, Keys and Habits of Mind

So your child attends a thinking school?

What does this actually mean?

As you know, New Horizons Children’s Academy is part of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT).

Many of the schools within our trust are accredited Thinking Schools. Being a Thinking School means we regularly think about everything that takes place. We

explicitly teach students and staff to think reflective, critically and creatively by using The Thinking Skills.

Essentially, we provide them with tools they can use throughout life in order to look at a topic from various perspectives, achieve and enjoy learning.

These are the six starting points to becoming a Thinking School:

The following document will provide you with ways to support at home so that you can help your child with school work and encourage them to use the thinking tools to think for themselves and reflect and monitor on their own progress and learning.

A Thinking School

Thinking Skills: Hats

Lets start with Thinking Hats which are perhaps the most well known Thinking Skill. Thinking Hats can help you to look at problems from different perspectives, but one at a time, to avoid confusion.

We use the white hat when we are thinking

about facts and information, figures

and dates. The white hat is the neutral

stance.

You use the yellow hat when you are thinking

of positives, being optimistic and thinking

about the benefit or value of something.

When we use the black hat, we are looking at

negatives and downsides. We are

thinking about possible dangers. This is our

cautious hat.

When we are being creative, we are

wearing our green hat. The green hat is for

possibilities and finding alternatives. It is for

new ideas.

The red hat is our feelings. When we

wear our red hat, we are considering our

emotions, our intuition and our hunches about

something.

The blue hat is for processes and control.

The blue hat is for breaking things down into steps and looking

into the next steps.

The purple hat is the hat we have created at New Horizons. It is for editing and used when

we make our purple pen edits and corrections.

Because this slide is delivering information

and facts, I’ve put a white hat in the corner

How you may see hats used in a lesson:

Because this slide shows ideas and

alternative ways to use hats, it

demonstrates green hat thinking

Thinking Skills: Keys

Thinking keys were suggested by Tony Ryan (1990) to stimulate different types of thinking. The keys help ‘unlock’ critical and creative thinking. It can be used in any subject and although some keys make sound similar, they can result in very

different results! We use 21 different thinkers keys at New Horizons:

The brainstorming key is about contemplating solutions to problems and coming up with any ideas you can.

Use each left of the alphabet to write a list

on a topic. For example, use the

alphabet key to write a list of animals. Start on

A and finish on Z!

Students are asked to consider of write

questions that begin with ‘what if…’

The question key is when you are provided

the answer and you must come up with

possible questions that would provide that

answer.

This is a great key for self evaluation. It is an

acronym for Bigger, Add or Replace. So you

consider what you could do bigger, what you could add or what

you could replace.

The picture key is when you are provided with a picture which appears to be totally unrelated to your learning and

you have to think creatively to make a link with your topic

For the full list of explanations of all the thinking keys. Look here:

https://www.tsatrust.org.uk/what-is-a-thinking-school/thinking-keys/

Thinking Skills: Keys

At New Horizons, we have created our own key: The Perspectives Key which has been designed to help pupils think about an issue from various perspectives and

start to make links between their subjects. For example, how may a scientist have a different perspective to an artist when studying animals?

Thinking Skills: Keys

How you may see keys used in a lesson:

We use visual mapping based on Hyerle and Alper (2011). These thinking maps provide children with a template or a method to communicate and organise their thinking. Each map has a frame of

reference for further information. The maps are a shared common language across all subjects which reduce children’s cognitive load so they can focus on the activity and learning, rather than

how to record it. In the next slides, we will go through each type of Thinking Map and how you can support your child with them

Visual Mapping:

A circle map is for brain storming or defining something – they are often used to recap what somebody previously has learnt. Think of them like a brainstorm or a mind-map. For

example, you might be learning about fractions so you’d put fractions in the middle, in the ‘donut’, you’d write everything you know about fractions and in the frame of reference, you

might write questions you have on fractions.

Circle Map

Frame of reference for

extra information,

questions and further analysis

Title of the circle map

Pupils answers or ideas in the

‘donut’

A bubble map is used to describe. Each bubble has an adjective in it. You need to think about what adjectives are most suitable. You may use a bubble map to describe a scene or identify how a person may be feeling. You could use it to identify the traits of a character or

to describe a picture.

A bubble map

Frame of reference for putting the adjectives

into a sentence, writing questions or any other analysis.

The name of what you are describing (it could be any

noun) e.g. London, a

character in a book or even

yourselfPut one adjective

in each bubble

A tree map is used to classify or sort information into categories or sub-categories. For example, you could use a tree map to say the positives (yellow hat) and negatives (black hat) of a situation

or to classify different types of animals (mammals, birds etc.) or materials (metal, wood) then under the sub-title, add more information, for example put the different properties of that

material.

Tree Map

Frame of reference for

extra information, questions or

key vocabulary

Title

Sub-title of different

categories

Information on the

category

A double bubble map is used to find similarities and differences. It is like a Venn diagram, comparing and contrasting two things (objects,

characters, subjects, animals etc.)

A Double Bubble Map

Frame of reference for extra information, questions and further

analysis

One topicthat you arecomparing

One topic that you are comparing

A difference which is

unique to the topic on this

side

Something that is similar about the

two topics

This is a map which you are probably more familiar with: it shows the sequence or order of events. You could write out the plot of a story or the

steps in problem solving. Each box can have a sub-box which show the sub-stages or extra details of that box

A Flow Map

Frame of reference for

further analysis such as questions

you have, language you’ve magpies or a hat

reflection

This is for each step of a

plan or process

A multi-flow map shows what caused an event and what the impact of the event are or what might happen next. This can be used to discuss cause and effects, identify consequences or

describe changes. It’s a way to analyse events or relationships, such as what caused World War 2 and what the impact of World War 2 was. Similarly, it could be used to identify the causes of

deforestation and what the impact of deforestation is.

A multi-flow map

Frame of reference for

further analysis

The event or situation your

focusing on

The causes of the event

Effects of the event

A brace map is used to identify parts or sub parts of a whole. It helps us to understand the structure of something, for example, the parts of a flower, we could break it down to the stem, the roots etc. then we could break each of those sub-parts down further into their sub-parts. It

is great to analyse physical objects and see the parts which make up a whole.

A Brace Map

Frame of reference for

further analysis

Idea broken down into small parts

The concept or object

Frame of reference for

further analysis

A bridge map is used for seeing analogies. It is used to identify the relationship or to interpret things, such as symbols. There is always a relating factor, for example it may be ‘means the same as’. So, if you are looking at Roman Numerals. You may write ‘6’ on the top, the relating factor will be ‘is the same as’

and you may write ‘VI’ on the bottom. It doesn’t only have to be for things that are the same though, you could have the relating factor as ‘opposites’ so on the top you could have ‘day’ is the opposite of ‘night’ –

this one is easiest to understand when you see an example on the next slide.

A Bridge Map

One concept

The second concept or

analogy you’re

comparing it to

The factor that is relating the two

concepts

The relating factor______________

Examples of Maps in Action:

Examples of Maps in Action:

As a Thinking School, we have drawn on the work of Art Costa and Bena Kallickon the power of habits and the strong implications it has for developing

students behaviours and successful dispositions as they journal through school. The Habits of Mind are 16 dispositions and behaviours, identified by Costa and

Kallick, which help students successfully approach problems and challenges they encounter in the classroom and in everyday life. The aim is to explicitly teach the

children these dispositions and reflect on them so they can become more resilient and develop the personal skills in order to solve problems and be

successful.

Developing Disposition:

Our 16 Habits of Mind

This is the Wobble Monster:

We have the ‘wobble’ when things are a bit tricky and we are out of our comfort zone.We encourage pupils to reflect on this and recognise it because having that ‘wobble’ feeling inside when things are a bit difficult is a sign we are learning something new!

Reflective Questioning

One of the elements of our Thinking school is that we use Q-Matrix questions. This helps learners become more aware of their own learning. The Question Matrix was developed by Chuck Weiderhold and is a set of question starters designed to develop higher-order thinking. The questions move from literal questions such as when, what and where questions to identify what they’ve understood. The questions then move to inferential questions to finds clues from the information. Then they move towards extended questions to give

students an opportunity to extend on the information.

Further reading if you are interested to Learn more:

• https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofsocialsciencesandinternationalstudies/education/research/groupsandnetworks/cedu/downloads/publications/What_is_a_Thinking_School.pdf

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Student-Successes-Thinking-Maps%C2%AE-School-Based/dp/1412990890