What you can learn

last updated:September 2010

What can you learn from giving your pupils thinking skills or challenging tasks?

Research evidence

When you use thinking skills approaches, you need to set pupils a cognitive challenge: a challenge that makes them think.  This can be a challenge to their usual way of thinking or perception of the world.  It may introduce new information that does not fit with previous experience.  The uncertainty arouses curiosity and extends thinking.  The tasks you set should be interesting and challenging, but achievable with the help of others.  

Your evidence

Setting up a cognitive challenge can give you the opportunity to discover the thought processes and the reasoning strategies your pupils are using. One way in which you could challenge pupils’ knowledge is by asking them to identify an odd one out and ask pupils to work out the similarities and differences. For example, take three:

• numbers
• artists
• philosophers
• chemicals; or
• historical figures.

The cognitive challenge in this case comes from exploring which variable is the key factor to consider. You could observe a small group of pupils closely as they deal with the task and record their interactions as they articulate and discuss their ideas.

Next steps

You may find it helpful to brainstorm with a colleague on different topics or issues that offer cognitive challenges and which would be appropriate to use with your pupils. This is a good way of expanding both your own and your pupils’ opportunities for deeper thinking or reasoning.