Getting started

Useful templates for introducing the approach

The Thinking Frames are an approach to promote classroom discussion, thinking skills and written explanations, they are not worksheets. However, teachers may find the downloadable templates useful when they first introduce the approach to children and other teachers. By using the worksheets you can very quickly demonstrate the 5 sections of the process and introduce the various thinking stages to the children.

We strongly recommend that before you use these templates with the children in the classroom, you should plan and deliver lessons where you "act out" and explain how to use the Thinking Frame. During your first lesson introduce a HOW or WHY question and use your whiteboard to act out how you as an adult would use "Brainwaves" and "See" to label diagrams from which you form a verbal explanation. Then give the children an opportunity to solve their own problems in a similar way. In a later lesson you can act out how we can use "Think/Sequence" and "Paragraph" approaches to help us to form a written explanation. The videos found in the Brainwave, See, Think/Sequence and Paragraph sections of this site aim to support you to do this.

Once your pupils are familiar with the processes then they can use the templates for group and individual work. One of the best ways to use the templates is to enlarge them to A3 size and then laminate them. Working in small groups the children can then use coloured felt tip pens to focus their ideas during small group discussion. This helps as it is easy for them to correct any errors that they may have and to adopt colour coding schemes if they help.

When children understand the Thinking Frame Approach and the various processes involved then they will no longer require the scaffold of the worksheets (indeed they may become restrictive as the boxes are too small for their diagrams etc). We recommend that you move away from using them and ask the pupils to use blank paper.

Download templates

The next section is 'Setting the Q', or you can learn more about Progression in Science.
(You can come back to Progression in Science immediately after completing this CPDU)