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What are Thinking Skills?

Thinking Skills are the mental processes we use to do things like: solve problems, make decisions, ask questions, make plans, pass judgements, organise information and create new ideas. Often we're not aware of our thinking - it happens automatically - but if we take time to ponder what's going on then we can become more efficient and more creative with our minds.
(Note: thinking about thinking is called Metacognition)

Researchers at Newcastle University, UK found well over 50 different classifications of thinking skills. They distilled them all down into one useful diagram:

Thinking Skills Diagram

Cognitive Thinking Skills

Information Gathering:

  • Sensing – seeing, hearing, touching
  • Retrieving – memory skills

Basic Understanding:

  • Organising gathered information
  • Forming concepts
  • Linking ideas together

Productive Thinking:

  • Using information and understanding
  • Creating, deciding, analysing, evaluating
Child Thinker 1 Child Thinker 2 Child Thinker 3
Strategic and Reflective Thinking Skills

This is metacognition - thinking about thinking. It can involve planning, monitoring and evaluating your use of the cognitive skills above. A good way to introduce young thinkers to reflective thinking is by making a display like this one (from Nettlestone Primary):

What is in your head?: A photo of a display of silhoette heads with a collae of pictures of their thinking inside thier heads

Books Thinking Skills Books by Mike Fleetham
Training Thinking Skills Training

I’ve been using Thinking Skills in classrooms and training rooms for over a decade and have written widely and practically on the subject.

I often run non-closure days in schools to demonstrate simple techniques for building Thinking Skills into the curriculum.

All my training is shot-through with opportunities to think, reflect, create and evaluate and demonstrates how easy it can be to bring Thinking Skills alive for all ages.

For more information about Thinking Skills INSET for your school please make an enquiry or visit the training page. 

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