Thinking skills – How to help young children develop them

Supporting young children’s developing thinking skills will open up lifelong learning opportunities, says Pamela May…

“Why are the trees empty?”. A curious three-year-old posed this question to me as we walked together through the orchard behind my house one winter’s afternoon.

Very young children often ask brainteasers such as these. All of us will have our own memories of similar delightful and often original and unexpected examples of childhood curiosity.

Although we may smile inwardly at how children phrase their questions, we answer them with all the clarity and honesty that we can muster. We recognise their importance to the child’s developing ability to notice, understand and reason.

Their ability to notice what happens in the world around them is a key element in the development of the good thinking skills that they will need to become successful learners.

Every scientist, designer, writer, cook or crafts person needs to be able to notice small changes in what they see in the course of their work. They also need to be able to respond in thoughtful and measured ways to what they see.

It is then possible to make reasoned judgements and achieve understanding as a result of what they have noticed.

Cultivating thinking skills

This process of cultivating a thoughtful approach to life begins in the cradle with loving and respectful exchanges between carer and baby.

Being involved in conversations and being sung and read to by adults who enjoy your company helps children know from early on that their feelings and ideas are important to those they love.

From this starting point grows the understanding that the world works to patterns that we can understand and play an active part in shaping.

By being interdependent with trustful adults, very young children move towards becoming independent and gaining the self-confidence to make suggestions, express ideas and make choices that they know will be valued.

Children who experience being loved, cherished and responded to will flourish in all areas of their development.

For example, in emotional development, a confident learner will begin to empathise with others and understand how others may be feeling.

In their cognitive development they will begin playing with the concept of symbolism, realising that one thing can represent something else in a game.

This opens up a whole new world of possibilities as they play out the idea of ‘what if?’, rather than ‘what is’, in imaginative role play games.

Positive habits

The EYFS enshrines the type of experiences that a child needs to have access to in order to encourage the fostering of successful learning habits.

The EYFS groups ways of learning that support children to play a central role and become effective learners. This includes:

• playing and exploring
• active learning
• creating and thinking critically

So crucial are these characteristics that they form a part of the EYFS Profile. We need to consider and comment on how our key children are progressing in the development of these aspects.

Again, as the EYFS rightly says, these learning characteristics are about processes rather than outcomes. The suggestion is that we’ll notice how children are learning by noticing the attitudes we see. Observable attitudes in children that would suggest they are developing these characteristics might be:

• concentration
• persistence
• questioning
• enthusiasm for new learning
• the ability to seek help
• using their initiative to solve problems
• being prepared to have a go
• coping with failure
• applying what they know to new situations
• enjoying success
• being able to plan and review activities

How to support positive habits

We can support children’s developing positive habits of learning in two major ways. Firstly, the learning environment needs to have interesting and challenging elements in it that will unlock children’s natural propensity to be curious and to explore.

A setting that will unlock children’s characteristics of effective learning is a place where, although routines and carers remain constant, sometimes surprising things happen. Sometimes things go wrong or there are unexpected outcomes.

In the outside area, for example, there will be a balance between safety and challenge, with nooks and crannies to explore, something to climb and somewhere to hide.

Encourage children to choose their own activities, to be either inside or outside, combine different pieces of equipment and use them for their own purposes.

Be on hand to engage in the sustained shared thinking that might lead in many different directions, all unknown at the outset but all rich with possibilities.

Children can apply what they’ve learnt before to new situations and begin to build on earlier experiences to plan and predict their next course of action.

This type of learning environment is an exciting place to be for both adults and children. The emphasis here is not so much on the body of knowledge children learn as the encouragement of positive learning styles.

Happily, though, in my experience this is not an either/or situation. For where children are realistically challenge and confidently engaged in their learning, their knowledge base increases significantly as they discover important things that they must practise, experiment with, record or recall in a range of ways.

More about thinking skills

The second role for adults in supporting the development of critical thinking is teaching the skills that children will need to use when they are tackling something new and need a high level of cognitive functioning to succeed.

Think, for example, of a four-year-old at the creative area of your setting who wants to make a car from the boxes, paper, glue, scissors and stapler that are available. They’ll need:

• a good memory of what a car looks like
• to be able to match the picture in their head to what might be possible from the equipment they have
• all of the characteristics of effective learning listed above
• a key person who knows them well and can sensitively share in this project in a supportive role

How to teach thinking skills

You can teach skills such as the development of memory, the ability to predict and the ability to plan and to persist through games, rhymes, stories, routines and conversations with young children.

We all need to recognise that these skills are vital for children to acquire in order for them to make the most of their learning opportunities.

Once securely available for everyday use, these skills become the habits of mind that lead to creativity and a positive disposition to learning.

We sometimes refer to children who have these high-order thinking skills as ‘mastery’ learners. They see complex new learning as a realistic challenge and an achievable goal. They believe that they are intrinsically able, by effort, to experience success and they steadily grow in confidence and competence.

It is within the early years setting that we can introduce and nurture habits of mind. As early years practitioners we are perfectly placed to instil a lifelong love of learning in the children in our care.

Pamela May is the author of The Thinking Child: Laying the foundations of understanding and competence.