Five: Putting it all together in a lesson

The last three chapters have set out the essential features of lessons which will stretch your children’s thinking. We have described these three main ‘pillars’ as cognitive conflict, social construction and metacognition, and given some examples of them in action in the classroom. But, at this point, the ideas still probably seem a bit too vague for you to put them into practice. Most teachers, quite reasonably, will ask for some more concrete materials and examples and guidance about how to create this type of thinking classroom. In this chapter we will discuss the published sets of activities suitable for different age groups and subject areas, in particular the Let’s Think! series, and suggest how they can be used. We will then outline a couple of examples of lessons to illustrate how the three pillars mentioned already (together with a couple of others) work together to make a complete thinking lesson.