"THINKING SKILLS" ACTIVITIES FOR GEOGRAPHY

For more on this go to the NEW KEY STAGE 3 PAGE of this website.

This page archived August 2008

Want to know more about Thinking Skills ? Go HERE. They developed out of the work of David Leat and others.

For a set of THINKING SKILLS pages, go to GEOWORLD which has some details of most of the contents of the 2 Thinking Skills books by David Leat and others.

The books themselves are published by CHRIS KINGTON PUBLISHING.

Get hold of these books to get the full picture. There is also the GA Gold Award winning "Re-Presenting Geography" by Liz Taylor, which comes recommended.

Click to see a larger image of the book cover - if you want to...

They are published by the rather excellent CHRIS KINGTON PUBLISHING

• Some good mysteries on the SLN site: in the Geo Excellence section. Go to the THINKING SKILLS page for even more new materials. This would be well worth a visit. They include one about whether new housing should be built on a floodplain by BOB THE BUILDER. Some new ones have just been added: there are 3 new ones as of January 2003, including ones on 3 Gorges Dam, Coastal Erosion on the Holderness coast (a good one) and Global Warming. Even more in November 2003: Effects of Weather concept map, Brazil Population Pyramid graph, Why is Make up threatening tigers in India, How are Farmers connected, Why is Omar stitching footballs secretly, London Docklands concept map etc. This is the one of the best places for new MYSTERIES and other resources and they may well have added some more since I updated this page.
• There's one on WHO KILLED CHICO MENDES. I used this recently with a top set Year 9 group and they quite got into it. It relates quite well to work in the OUP textbook series Geog.1, 2 & 3 series which we use. I also have a copy of Roy Harper's song to Chico: 'The Tallest Tree'. Could be used as a starter, or at least some of it...

This section of the SLN Geography website has now been substantially enlarged and has some fab resources on it...

• Also a mystery on the same site on a death in the "honeypot" of CASTLETON. Not sure they needed to kill the bloke to get an impact, but it's a handy addition to work on National Park conflicts, and can be adapted - as indeed can all mysteries to provide a local context. The potential for taking an existing mystery and tailoring it to your own needs is one of the advantages of this as a strategy. I suppose if this was History there'd be lots of murders though, so let him die !
• There are some good resources on Learning Styles and other ways of breaking up a lesson or arranging groups, which have been produced by Paul Ginnis, and are available through the Pembrokeshire Grid for Learning, or from his own website CROWN HOUSE. It starts with TEACHING STYLES.

• TOM WILSON's page has some references to books which are relevant to Thinking Skills work, and some of them work as hyperlinks to be able to order the resources if you don't already have them.

• Some THINKING SKILLS materials (HIGHER ORDER too) at the NORTHERN GRID site. Has some materials on River Regeneration projects.

Also visit the striking design of the THINKING CLASSROOM. Thanks to Mike Fleetham for contacting me (July 2004) and updating the link to this site. He has also told me that there is a FREE monthly resource available from the site to assist you with your thinking skills if you sign up for the newsletter. There are lots of ideas for creating what Mike calls a 'THINKING CLASSROOM' and lots of resources in a 'THINKING TOOLBOX'. Worth checking out to see what's available. A books is also available on the 'Thinking Classroom'. Please head over there and take a look - tell them GeographyPages sent you !

• There's also a growing range of resources produced at the excellent site of Northern Ireland's SLEMISH COLLEGE -  for example some YEAR 10 RESOURCES including POWERPOINTS on Mount Etna, Soil Erosion in Nepal and Global Warming, plus a Thinking Skills Activity on ECO-TOURISM. Recommended.

• A HOLIDAYS 'most likely to' which I use is HERE

• Some very good THINKING SKILLS posters produced by Buckinghamshire folk by clicking here: http://www.bucksgfl.org.uk/resources/mod/resource/view.php?id=2592

Information on early 2005 INSET attended on the idea of THINKING TOGETHER IN GEOGRAPHY related to a new book by Badger Publishing.

CONFERENCE SESSION WITH DAVID LEAT: June 2004, Norwich

At the Norfolk Secondary Geography conference in June 2004, delegates to the conference were privileged to have the chance to attend a session run by one of the more influential members of the educational community.... but enough about the ICT workshop I ran...

David Leat ran 2 sessions: one for all delegates, and one for a smaller group in the afternoon.

He went through the benefits of the THINKING SKILLS approach (heuristics) and the importance of having a dry bicycle.

We went through an exercise in the afternoon looking at Higher Level Thinking Skills relating to footpath erosion in a National Park.

It was great to have the time to work through the thought processes behind the Thinking Skills model, and to see some of the benefits of using this. As with all tools it needs to be used sparingly, to avoid the risk of  'death by card sort'...

GA BOOKS

Been checking some of these out recently...

Some resources to come on these when I get a moment - and there are some new ones in the series too.

Why not go to the BOOKSHOP and buy them

GA CONFERENCE 2007

Gary Dawson presented a session at the GA Conference as one of the Secondary Phase Committee workshops. He introduced an interesting hybrid: the MYSTERY MOVIE: a combination of a Mystery and a Movie, and provided an example, and a scaffolded writing frame.

A nice idea...

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