“A Thinking School is an educational community in which all members have a common commitment to giving regular careful thought to everything that takes place. This will involve both students and staff learning how to think reflectively, critically and creatively, and to employing these skills and techniques in the co-construction of a meaningful curriculum and associated activities. Successful outcomes will be reflected in student’s across a wide range of abilities demonstrating independent and cooperative learning skills, high levels of achievement and both enjoyment and satisfaction in learning. Benefits will be shown in ways in which all members of the community interact with and show consideration for each other and in the positive psychological well-being of both students and staff” (Burden, 2008)

At Gordano we are successfully developing thinking skills amongst our learning community and we are striving to ensure that all pupils are developing and demonstrating independent and co-operative learning skills using a range of thinking tools.

We have set up a Drive Team to accelerate this work and representatives from all faculties are part of this team together with members of SLT, our Leading Edge co-ordinator, our ASTs and representatives from the Student Leadership Team.

The Drive Team has been subdivided into three groups each with their own agenda:

Group 1 : responsible for devising our Learning Language (that is now being implemented across the whole school.

Group 2 : responsible for Tools for Students. For example this has involved training staff on the use of Hyerle’s Maps, De Bono’s hats, Think, Pair, Share, Mind mapping and other AfL techniques. This group have also worked on displaying these tools around the school site.

Group 3: responsible for Tools for Teachers. For example this has led faculty specific versions of Blooms Taxonomy being displayed in every classroom, a termly Drive Magazine being circulated to all staff and inset training on AfL.

We are currently looking at how our proposed new curriculum will dovetail in with this work and how Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills in the new curriculum can be tracked across the school