Thinking Skills Blog - Cockton Hill Infant School

An Emotionally Intelligent School

November 5, 2018 by admin

05/11/18

Whilst on playground duty last week I watched as some boys were throwing the rugby ball to each other. At one point one boy misplaced his pass and the ball hit another child on the head. I began to walk over to see if the boy was okay (I should point out that he was fine). The boy that had been hit by the ball was completely unaware of who did it. I watched as the boy who threw the ball walked over to the child that had been hit and admitted that he had hit him with the ball. He then asked if was okay. He had genuine concern in his face as he did this. It made me extremely proud. The boy who had misplaced the pass did not realise that I was watching. He had no reason the check the boy’s welfare other than a genuine concern for him.

We have been promoting emotional intelligence in school. Emotional intelligence includes the recognition of emotions in oneself and in others, how to manage those emotions and therefore how to show empathy. This event made me proud because it proved that what we are doing in this area is working. I can name several other instances exhibiting similar success in this area.

Emotional intelligence is important not just to live in an empathetic, tolerant environment but it is also important in the work arena. The World Economic Forum have completed a list of the top ten skills valued by employers in 2020 and beyond. Emotional intelligence is one of those ten skills. It seems that we are preparing the children well for their future careers.

Emotional Intelligence – Recognising Emotions

September 17, 2018 by admin

17/09/18

Friday saw the return of our mixed classes focusing on elements of emotional intelligence, growth mindset, meta-cognition and thinking skills. This session was focused on emotional intelligence and in particular recognising emotions in others as well as our own emotions. After some discussion about various emotions and what they look like, the children were set the task of roleplaying various scenarios, considering the emotions involved. Finally the children made selfies of what they think their facial expression would be in various situations. Learning such skills help the children to work in teams effectively and show empathy to others.

Mindfulness Research

April 14, 2018 by admin

14/04/18

Reflecting on much of the work that we have been working on with the children in terms of emotional intelligence recently, the Cognitive Drive Team have noted how well the children have taken to the work on mindfulness that is going on within school. We now have weekly “Lego Therapy” and “Relax Kids” sessions that the children can attend. These sessions aside, the children have also learnt strategies to manage their emotions including breathing exercises and other physical exercises. You may have heard the children talking about these. All of these events contribute to the children’s mindfulness. Recent research by neuroscientist Amishi Jha suggests that this may also improve the attention and concentration of individuals. This is obviously a benefit we would welcome so we are looking to raise the profile of mindfulness further within school.

See Amishi Jha’s Ted talk about her research here

For more of the work completed by her team you can also browse her website here

Our Thinking Skills Curriculum

January 12, 2018 by admin

12/01/17

We hope that you like our new thinking skills curriculum display. The display highlights the full spectrum of work we do within school regarding thinking skills. The display highlights the overlapping nature of the skills taught. They are real skills for life that we envisage children using well into adulthood.

Thinking Skills Conference

November 4, 2017 by admin

04/11/17

Some of the drive team recently attended a thinking skills conference organised by Thinking Schools International. The conference was an opportunity to attend workshops, share practice and reflect on what we already do in school. We attended workshops on thinking hats and questioning and also listened to keynote speakers discussing thinking skills as tools for academic progress.

Since the conference we have reviewed several elements of our practice and these were discussed at a Cognitive Drive Team meeting. We have adapted the way we use De Bono’s red hat thinking. We felt that we spent too much time on this hat in the past thus removing the “gut reaction” element of it. We will now aim to spend a maximum of 30 seconds on this hat.

We will also develop some staff training on questioning to strengthen our practice in this area.

We also discussed out general teaching of thinking skills and their integration into our curriculum. One of the key note speakers at the conference discussed how to effectively introduce children to thinking skills. He discussed research that suggests the best way to achieve this was a mixed approach. That is, explicit sessions teaching thinking skills in addition to thinking skills integrated into subject areas. This is consistent with what we currently do in school, so it was decided that we should continue this approach.

Challenging Growth Mindset Research

September 7, 2017 by admin

One hot topic of discussion within the Cognitive Drive Team is the recent release of some research which challenges growth mindset as an effective tool for academic success. The research claims to have recreated the work of Carol Dweck and concluded that growth mindset has no impact on educational progress or response to challenge. This challenges much of the research we have used to inform our practice within school. The findings of this study are also contrary to our findings within school, where we believe growth mindset practice has significantly improved children’s attitude to challenge and helped them to progress. However it would be foolish to ignore this research without reflecting on it further. The cognitive drive team discussed this article and decided to continue our growth mindset practice given its success within school. However, in order to monitor such practice and ensure continuing success in this area, it was decided that we would utilise questionnaires to monitor children’s attitudes to learning.

The research discussed in the blog post can be found here.