This book can be used in different ways and at different levels. Each level of use has an impact on learning but the benefits increase as you engage in more detail with the key principles and embed the approach into your teaching.

Level 1: Using or applying the teaching resources

You can use the activities as they are described, together with the photocopiable resources, to create more interesting and challenging lessons. You can be confident that they have been tried and tested in real classrooms.

Level 2: Adaptation and development

Most teachers like to take an idea and adapt and improve on it – this is what we hope you will do with these exemplars. It is only when you begin to develop new versions that you really start to get to grips with the fundamental issues of what to keep, what to change and what to throw away. At this level the feedback from pupils’ engagement with the tasks starts to inform the teacher’s assessment of their understanding and feeds forward into future tasks.

Level 3: Debriefing learning and metacognition

This is when you feel more confident about managing discussion with pupils about the process of learning during a thinking skills lesson. More attention is given to talking about how the pupils have tackled a task and comparing different approaches to see what was effective and what was not. The exemplars give some useful tips about how to develop this aspect of teaching thinking.

Level 4: Total infusion

Infusion is when a whole-school approach is required. Integrating or infusing teaching thinking approaches requires changes in assessment policies and practices as well as in schemes of work.