At the very beginning of our Nordplus Project I was very unsure as to how to start introducing thinking into my classes. Our workshop in Riga in September introduced us to the Thinking Task Framework and made it clearer that using this could help us a lot.

I then started using some TA with all my classes, but sporadically, really just testing out how the TTF works, how pupils react and trying to work out how I can adapt this to fit my course books.

CLASS 3     The Yes/No game with numbers, sorting tasks with basic vocabulary, and in the spring, a series of tasks on Describing a Person, Describing families and people. ENV. The series of tasks  was my first  real attempt to go round the Thinking Task Framework and I was amazed at how well my pupils responded it, even with the limited English they had. We used ENV, though I didn’t give it a name or talk explicitly about thinking. I was attempting to adapt the course book to thinking.

CLASS 4     The Yes /No game with classroom objects, Yes / No Game and ENV,  (many times – they really developed) and a series of lessons based on selling clothes at a flea market, Clothes and Selling. These worked reasonably well, but I got very confused trying to use ENV and we ran out of time.

CLASS 5     Describing a Person (a grandparent), English Class 5 ENV and Describing a Country,Describing a country. These were both attempts at adapting themes and tasks from the course book to make them more thinking. They worked quite well and both the children and I found them interesting, but I don’t know if they helped the pupils to get any better at thinking at all, and as always, time was short. Although time during the lessons passed very quickly and the pupils were very engaged, I wasn’t sure how well some of the poorer pupils were keeping up.

CLASS 6    The Password Game was useful, but was all we had time for (or all I thought I had time for).

MY REFLECTIONS ON THE YEAR

-          I'm very motivated to do more of this and am impressed at what can be achieved. However, I still don’t see that I’m a ‘TA Teacher’, for various reasons:

-          I don’t know how to change the pupils’ attitude to their own work and learning

-          I don’t have an overall working system which includes TA regularly

-          I still haven’t used TA at all in grammar or speaking activities

-          I’d love to use self-study with them, but don’t know where to start.

The Finnish teacher and I planned some lessons together for the 6^th class to do with books and films, Books and Films, Matilda and Holes, English and Finnish, in the mother-tongue class and I can see that class discussions there can be very interesting and useful. However, I’ve got beginner English pupils, so I have to adapt how we use TA and how we ‘discuss’, using English, accordingly.

A FEW THOUGHTS

-          I myself have to understand the basic thinking skills the pupils would need to begin understanding for example, ENV, and work gradually with these through English from Grade 3 on.

-          In future I have to pay much more attention to the following:

aims, suitable contexts, encouraging certain behaviour, talking about learning and thinking, finding my own ‘thinking’ voice and understanding the system better, self-study.

-          Longer term I think I’d have to work without a book to make this work well – I’m finding it very hard to keep to the book and do TA tasks, though it does seem to be possible up to a point.  I have to give the pupils more say, and bring in parents too.