It's Cool to be Clever
Did you know that your brain is amazing?
It uses 20% of your body's energy It weighs more than a bag of sugar If the average weight of a new born baby is seven pounds, then the baby's brain weighs one pound
Each side of the brain controls different ways of thinking. The left hand side of the brain is logical and sees details. The right hand side of the brain is creative and sees the big picture. Scientists believe that one side of our brain is more dominant than the other. The more we use both sides of the brain, the more we develop our ability to think. (You may wish to see Ken Robinson's speech on Youtube) At Downham we encourage our children to do this. The 'World is Changing' (You may wish to view this on Youtube) and it is important that our children are independent thinkers and learners who are able to tackle problems and find solutions.
During the Autumn Term 2009, children in all nine classes across all three Key Stages will be using different activities to develop thinking and promote thinking skills. Below is a summary of the different activities and examples of children using them.
SMARTs
Children will continue to identify their preferred learning styles using our survey as they have in previous years. The results of this will be recorded in your child's home/school diary. In addition to this, your child(ren) will be thinking about what they are 'SMART' at. According to Gardner, there are eight types of intelligences or SMARTs. These are: body, group, maths, music, nature, picture, self and word. Classteachers will work with their class to help then to identify which SMART they are. Look out for a note or sticker in your child's home/school diary to explain. Some classes may display the results of the children's SMARTS using a 'Fantasticat' display. These are cat pictures with writing explaining what each child is 'fantastic at'
6 Hat Thinking
Edward De Bono's six hat thinking helps children (and adults) to see a problem or scenario from a different point of view. There are 6 coloured hats and each colour hat represents a different way of thinking. The white hat is about seeing the facts and the red hat is about opinions/ feelings. The black hat represents all the negative reasons and the yellow hat represents all the positive reasons. The blue hat is the big picture and seeing all sides of an argument (the blue hat thinker is also the chairperson of the group). The green hat represents creativity and finding new solutions. In each classroom you will see displayed baseball caps for each of the colours.
Thinker Keys
Tony Ryan's Thinker Keys are used to encourage creativity. They are often used as Early Morning Work (children may go to classes at 8:45, ten minutes before the bell rings) or as starters to lessons. Sometimes they are used as the question for our Thinking Boards following Monday's assembly. There are twenty different Thinker Keys. For example, the Alphabet Key asks children to list something for each letter of the alphabet for a topic. The Question Key asks children to think of a question that will suit a given answer.
Mind Mapping
Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping is used to organise ideas on a topic visually. The use of colour and curved lines is particularly important in these as the brain is able to remember colour and curved lines more effectively.
This website included examples of the children's work during 2009 - 2010.