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The current Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills Framework is one of the building blocks of the Big Picture of the curriculum. It makes clear the necessity for teachers in all subjects and in all phases to have a thorough understanding of thinking skills. Trainees need to acquire an understanding of why and how this knowledge will impact upon the quality of their teaching and the quality of their pupils’ learning.

Familiarisation with and the use of methodologies that will effectively promote, enhance and develop thinking skills as discrete entities is essential for two reasons. Firstly because these are the keys that are capable of unlocking pupils’ learning per se and trainees need to be able to use them and secondly, at a metacognitive level, there needs to be the understanding that there is a need to develop the pupils’ explicit awareness that they are learning how to learn.

The framework can be seen at http://www.qca.org.uk/libraryAssets/media/PLTS_framework.pdf and has six components, these are described in detail along with the desired outcomes of each. The framework makes suggestions as to how teachers should support pupils into being independent enquirers, creative thinkers, reflective learners, team workers, self managers and effective participators. The components are seen as being interdependent.

One of the privileges of working with trainee teachers is that the taught programme provides good opportunities to introduce the trainees to ideas and watch them go into the classroom. I recently led a thinking skills day for the Merseyside and Cheshire Graduate Teacher Programme. The fifty trainees, from primary and secondary phases with specialisms across the curriculum, were able to look at a range of ideas to promote thinking skills and to put them into the appropriate context.

We put LVT centre-stage in the afternoon session and asked the question “What could a thinking classroom look like?” The results of this are shown in the following pictures. The trainees engaged with and enjoyed learning to use the tools and reflecting on what they had experienced in terms of their personal reactions as thinkers and how they might use the LVT kits with their pupils.