It is near the end of a Year 8 geography lesson and the teacher has asked the class what they have learned. John is the last contributor and he says “There’re more brains in groups”. This lesson is captured on a video that accompanies the new training folder for the foundation subjects strand of the key stage 3 strategy.

It would be hard to think of a better comment to summarise the importance of collaborative learning in the strand. On one level it represents a strong message about how pupils learn from and through their fellow pupils. On another, it stands for the way in which teachers benefit from learning collaboratively, creating a strong professional culture.

The foundation subject strand is the last of five to roll out to schools. As it covers nine subjects, including geography, it is more generic than the other strands, focusing on teachers’ skills and pupils’ learning. Thus the training folder has four sections: planning and assessment; teaching repertoire; structuring learning; and knowing and learning.

In each local authority there is a consultant whose role is to support selected departments in developing and sharing their practice. The aim is to work with departments which want to develop expertise. As the strand progresses this expertise can be shared both across the school and in subject networks. Just as pupils benefit from working together so do teachers.

Geography, along with history, can claim that it has been in the vanguard of teaching thinking in the foundation subjects. One of the reasons for this is because it draws on a wide range of media - text, maps, photographs, diagrams, graphs and numbers - and therefore geographers have a stake in broad questions of how pupils process information, how they transform data from one form to another and make meaning as they interpret pattern.

Another reason is that geography is not dominated by right answers, which puts a premium on creative and critical thinking.

The “knowing and learning” section of the training folder provides much support for those teachers who want to develop teaching thinking. This is borne out in the “principles of teaching thinking” module, which is illustrated by a task that will be familiar to those who have used the Thinking Through Geography books (Chris Kington publishing) - Making Animals.

In the classroom version of the task, pupils are used to select a number of animal characteristics (thick fur, fast runner, sharp incisors, for instance) from a long list to “make” a carnivore adapted to living in the Arctic. Pupils are forced to think about the environment, how the animal fits together and with skilful teaching how their animal will catch prey and cope with hard winters. The added value of the task comes from being asked to reflect on how it has been done. Pupils begin to see that they have been using planning strategies that recur in almost any setting.

When you design something, you have to think hard about the context, you have to see how the parts fit together to make a whole, you have to work with the available resources, you check and review and sometimes you copy what is already out there (so basing your animal on a seal or fox is fairly sensible).

Making Animals can be adapted to all sorts of other lesson contexts. It has three components: a context, some choices (the list of things) and some constraints (only six features allowed or a fixed cost if the choices are priced). The task can be adapted to designing a country park, a self-help development aid scheme or a traffic management scheme for a city.

However, in the module the task is used to illustrate many important concepts in teaching thinking - metacognition, working memory, long-term memory, challenge, construction of understanding and learning through talk.

“Thinking together” is one of the two new modules and it should be fertile ground for those who have been developing thinking skills. The module introduces the concept of exploratory talk, in which ideas are created, developed, challenged and refined. It is the medium through which individuals come together to think. It demonstrates how such productive group talk can be encouraged through establishing ground rules and, as John says, “there’re more brains in groups”.

David Leat is regional director for foundation subjects and author of Thinking through Geography and More Thinking through Geography (Chris Kington Publishing www.chriskingtonpublishing.co.uk) Training materials for foundation subjects are distributed by LEAs. Additional copies are available from PrologTel: 0845 602260 Product code: 03502002

MAPS FROM MEMORY

Kaeti Strickland of Knottingley School, Wakefield, is teaching a thinking skills activity to a Year 8 class. The class have been doing a “maps from memory” exercise. The pupils are in groups of four and their task is to reproduce a map of Rome that is on the front desk. The procedure is as follows:

* Each pupil comes up twice so the group has eight visits

* The group are asked to plan their strategy and write it down

* Pupils look at the map for 10 seconds without pen or paper

* After four visits the group are given the chance to review and adjust their overall strategy

* After the eight visits the class reflect on their strategies Kaeti collates the pupils’ strategies on the board but she also does three important things:

* She suggests that there is a pattern - to get the main outline of the map, divide it into sections and then focus on the detail;

* She suggests that this pattern is important in other contexts, for example in writing;

* Finally she asks the class to complete a sheet on how you get to know a map of a new area (useful in taking in any diagram) and what skills you need to pack when going on holiday.

This is an excellent plenary which encourages pupils to think more about their learning and its value and how they learn from each other. She is encouraging them to be metacognitive.