Thinking workshop

On Saturday Muritai hosted Michael Pohl, an international expert on using thinking skills in the classroom. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day based around three main sessions - a school-wide culture of thinking, using thinking skills in the classroom and developing students interaction with thinking skills. Michael really stretched us throughout the day and really challenged us to think about how we were constructing learning tasks for the children. Thinking is one of the five key competencies in the new curriculum so this was timely PD for us as we look to strengthen our knowledge of embedding the KC into our learning framework. One key thing shared through the day was how influential thinking skills will become as our children head to the future and our five years olds hit the workforce in thirteen years time. Their workplace won't be likeit is today and certainly like it was in 1990 so we have to keep refining what we do. You may like to read this excellent 2008 article entitled All Our Students Thinking, by Nel Noddings, Professor of Education at Stanford University.