29 Aug 2023

Developing Learning Habits through the Power of Storytelling

This month's blog is by Arabella Chute: The world is changing in many ways, and the educational system is finding ways to evolve alongside society with varying degrees of success. Many schools are thinking hard, not just what they teach, but increasingly how they teach. The growing understanding is that today's children must master more than subject-area knowledge to thrive in tomorrow's world, and being a Thinking School is taking part in this progression.

28 Jul 2023

Summer Research Round-up on Life-long Learning, AI & Study Techniques

Wanting to keep your eye in on some of the latest ideas and research related to metacognition and self regulation this summer? Here’s a few books, articles and podcasts for the sun lounger:.

29 Jun 2023

Neuroplasticity and Growth Mindset. What's the connection?

Having spent much of the last decade using words such as: yet, growth, potential, flexible in my teaching and conversations with students it only recently dawned on me that this only focused on mindset. The structure of our brain and how it functions was not where I started the conversation in the classroom. Now's the time to reflect!.

02 May 2023

What is a Thinking School? The journey towards accreditation

You have read the EEF report, you have tried and begun to embed different metacognitive strategies, you meet students in the corridor that begin to talk about their learning… What is your next step? That’s easy to answer: become a Thinking School! A Thinking School takes an explicit, evidence informed, whole school approach to developing pupils’ cognitive capability and intelligent learning behaviours. .

31 Mar 2023

Thinking Matters in Northern Ireland

With its easy 'fit' with the Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities framework within the Northern Ireland statutory curriculum, the Thinking School approach continues to draw interest from local schools there. .

30 Mar 2023

Can you motivate all your students to self-direct their revision?

As the summer term looms with exam and assessment season this is the moment for us to take a step back and remind ourselves of the metacognitive cycle. Please indulge me on this one! Slogging towards someone else’s goal is never going to be motivating. For some students achieving their best or being given a target grade is not an enticing carrot; it feels like an imposed, overwhelming or unacheivable target.

29 Mar 2023

March Research Round-up on Metacognitive Strategies, Well-Being and Self-Regulated Learning

As the spring term comes to a close, Thinking Matters brings you our latest Research Round-up. This month the highlighted books and articles focus on metacognitive strategies, retrieval practice, well-being and self-regulated learning..

13 Mar 2023

The EEF and Implementation: Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning

In this article, we explain how the Thinking Matters approach follows the best research-informed strategies for the implementation of metacognition and self-regulated learning and how this relates to the EEF’s ‘Putting Evidence to Work -A School’s Guide to Implementation’..

01 Mar 2023

What are the benefits of a common metacognitive language?

If I shout duck, how would you respond? Any sense of urgency or fear in my voice would probably prompt a reflexive response. Duck and you would duck! Call and response is one way we help develop and create neural networks to build automaticity and reduce the bottleneck in our working memory..

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