Holy Name Catholic Primary School

Here at Holy Name, our children are the focal point of everything we do. To help our children lead fulfilling lives, it is important to instil within them a love of learning and help them to become a lifelong learner. Lifelong learners always have their eyes open; they are always looking for something new to learn. They are always curious; whatever they learn, they learn it actively by engaging with the world. They take out time to reflect upon what they learn, which helps them understand how it will help them grow and help improve the world. Through both our school ethos and our PSHE lessons, we recognise how we are all different and unique. Not only do we all look different, we all think differently too, which impacts the way that we learn. Thinking Moves A to Z is a structured approach to thinking about the different ways we think (this is known as metacognition). It is a programme that enables us to describe the way we are thinking when we are learning. By having a way of talking about how we all think, it enables our children to work on improving the effectiveness of their thinking and thus their learning. The Thinking Moves themselves are not new – we all use them in our life every day. Regular reference to Thinking Moves motivates our pupils to practise and demonstrate different sorts of thinking. The use of metacognitive thinking and strategies enables pupils to become flexible, creative and self-directed learners. Metacognition particularly assists pupils with additional educational needs in understanding learning tasks, in self-organising and in regulating their own learning. There are 26 Thinking Moves (one for every letter of the alphabet). Once children become familiar with each particular Thinking Move, they are able to use it as a means of learning independently. The use of Thinking Moves empowers our children to actively select a particular method of thinking to access any learning activity. Thinking Moves promotes a conscious understanding of the methods of thinking we must employ in order to tackle any learning tasks. Here at Holy Name, we understand the importance of not only teaching our pupils new knowledge and skills but of equipping them with the thinking tools needed to access such new knowledge and skills. For this reason, we employ Thinking Moves across the curriculum.

We were honoured to welcome to our school the creator of Thinking Moves A to Z, Roger Sutcliffe. Roger came to see for himself the superb work our children are doing putting Thinking Moves to excellent use to help them with their learning.

We were delighted to welcome to our school teachers all the way from Isle of Man. They observed Thinking Moves in action across the curriculum and were very impressed with how our pupils used a wide range of Moves to help them with their learning.

Our Masters of Thinking Moves had a busy couple of weeks 'Testing' all children in Years 2-6 about their knowledge of all 26 Thinking Moves. If children could name every Move, they were awarded a certificate.

We are proud to say that over 170 certificates were awarded. Well done everyone!

We at Holy Name are proud to be leading the way in implementing the Thinking Moves A to Z programme across the whole school and the entire curriculum. Here are just a few examples of how we use Thinking Moves to enhance our learning experiences...