Developing thinking skills with interactive classroom displays

last updated:01 Jan 2009

Chloe Wardle, a Year 6 teacher in North London, wanted to know if creating the right classroom conditions could encourage thinking skills.

She was looking for ideas to challenge and motivate bright, high-attaining children in her class.

What did she do?
Chloe displayed a number of unusual photographic images by Canadian photographer Jeff Wall to stimulate open-ended enquiry. The five images she used over the course of her enquiry were called:

• a ventriloquist at a birthday party in October
• the destroyed room
• insomnia
• the doorpusher
• the invisible man.

Chloe challenged the children to make sense of the images. They posted their questions and comments on a 'thinking wall' and Chloe took photographs of this as it developed. In this way the children were encouraged to take ownership of the project.


What did she learn?
Chloe found that:

• children responded better when there was a small reward such as a sweet
• grouping children in threes helped to develop pupils’ thoughts and was effective for lower-attaining pupils
• variations in feedback to children positively affected their future response
• using ‘because’ was a significant breakthrough for some pupils when developing their thinking
• responses and thoughts from children became longer and deeper over the course of the project
• projects like this need to be well-managed including a consideration of  how to motivate pupils to participate on a long-term basis
• children need help to name different types of thinking, for example imaginative thinking and reasoning.