Implementing thinking skills in the school curriculum

'Think Fresh' is a three-year Comenius project that involved the stimulation and development of thinking in schools from five participating countries, namely Belgium, Sweden, England, Holland and Malta, represented by Qormi Primary C, St Sebastian.

Every participating school has sought to implement thinking skills within the curriculum. As a result, hundreds of students have had direct teaching of thinking skills, and teachers have received training in the De Bono thinking tools.

During the last scholastic year, the Qormi school, headed by Emmanuel Grech, went a step further and held a meeting for parents, during which an overview of the Six Thinking Hats was delivered, and parents had the opportunity to learn more about what their children were learning during the Thinking Skills programme.

The project was mainly based on the thinking tools invented by Dr Edward de Bono. The simplicity of the tools allows students to learn the tools directly and then apply the thinking skills learnt to other areas of the curriculum and to their personal lives.

The final meeting of this international project was held in Bruges, Belgium, last month. The meeting's objectives were the exchange of ideas and good practice, productive thinking, sharing and inspiration.

Furthermore, the participants had the opportunity to set up and finalise the final product - an eight-page brochure that will eventually be distributed in all participating schools.

Dr de Bono, inventor of lateral thinking and the Six Thinking Hats, attended the meeting and took part in a half-day session with participants presenting what each school had been doing during the past scholastic year.

Shirley Pulis Xerxen spoke about the Thinking Skills programme that runs in several Maltese State schools, where the De Bono thinking tools are taught with an emphasis on the process and then helped to infuse the skills learnt to different situations in school and beyond.

The English school's headmistress, Janet Newman, spoke about the 'scaffold approach' to thinking as adopted by her primary school in Milton Keynes.

This approach provides a learning structure for students with learning difficulties and helps to extend the more able learners. Moreover, it encourages collaborative learning, supports speaking and listening and raises self-confidence and self-esteem.

During their presentation, the Swedish team talked about the role that teachers should play in the classroom, where the focus is on thinking together.

Ms Pulis Xerxen's visit was made possible in collaboration with the European Union Programmes Unit (EUPU) and the Education Division, Malta.