Critical Thinking Workshops

Children are natural inquirers. Every day in school they are putting their critical thinking skills into practice, and this ability to think critically is an asset that will stand your child in good stead as they move through primary school, into secondary and throughout their adult lives. Good thinking should be a habit, and habits need to start young!

Developing good thinking habits helps your child when they come to formal exams like SATs. For example, an English SATS paper will include a reading comprehension paper, where your child will have to make inferences and deductions from set texts. In fact, research has suggested that children who are taught critical thinking skills perform better at both language comprehension and problem-solving.

So therefore, we have introduced some very exciting workshops for our Year 5 and Year 6 students to encourage, develop and utilise these skills, and have fun at the same time! In conjunction with Headington Girls School, these workshops occur once every half term and take place at lunchtime. The children so enjoy them, there is not a single moan about missing a lunch hour and they seem to only ever ask "When is the next one?"

So far we have looked at:

Literacy

Blackout Poetry - Y5 & Y6

Maths

Owning an ice-cream shop and managing sales - probability and decision-making - Y5 & Y6

Debate

"Should footballers be paid more than nurses?" - Y5 v Y6

Maths

Problem-Solving - Radio 4's "Problem of the Day" and Tangrams - How many can you solve? - Y3 & Y4