Roger Sutcliffe, Director of DialogueWorks and Creator of the Thinking Moves A-Z

As Kate Hosey said in her blog post in 2022, some students – perhaps many – can “find it hard to motivate themselves to be more active in their learning”.

There may be various reasons for this, some of which may be related to social trends beyond the classroom. This blog post is not intended to offer a cure for all of those!

What it offers is a simple suggestion, that students might be more engaged with their learning if they saw it as a way of developing skills for life – followed by another, as to how that desired outcome might be reached.

What do we mean by ‘learning’?

The word ‘learning’ is ambiguous between content – what is learnt – which is typically ‘subject’-based, and process – the daily slog, and sometimes satisfaction, of ‘studying’.

Many students, if not most, see learning predominantly as the former – the acquisition of stipulated knowledge, rather than the development of smart skills for life.

But what could be smarter than cognitive – essentially, thinking – skills? (Well, perhaps metacognitive ones – but watch this space!)

If only the teaching and learning process explicitly promoted and practised such skills, then maybe, just maybe, more students would value and engage with the process.

How could this ideal be reached? The key is in the word ‘explicitly’. Any taught lesson, at any level and in any subject, demands of the students a variety of thinking skills. (If not, it cannot be worth its salt!)

How often are these demands spelled out? To be fair, the best teachers will do this, if not in advance of a learning task, then afterwards, by way of explaining how it could have been done better.

But there are still two challenges to be overcome.

Developing a shared language for thinking skills

I recognised the first of these challenges about 15 years ago, when I was commissioned to teach some teachers (more) about thinking skills. It is that there is no common language for teachers and learners to talk about thinking skills, nor indeed any appreciation of the full range of such skills.

That was when I set about creating Thinking Moves A-Z, a list of the 26 most fundamental cognitive skills – which has the further merit of being easy to learn and use.

This scheme enables teachers to be clear what sorts of thinking they are expecting students to practise in any given lesson. Typically, they might highlight two or three metacognitive ‘moves’ per lesson for the students to focus on, but over a term or year they might aim to cover as full a range as possible.

The second challenge is that, ultimately, the aim is for students not only to be more aware of their capacity for different sorts of thinking – what I sometimes call their ‘brain powers’ – but to practise those skills independently: to see themselves as, and indeed to be, ‘good thinkers’.

That, of course, is the point at which those skills can properly be called ‘metacognitive’ – when students are not just thinking about their thinking, but doing so with purpose and with proficiency.

Inspiration, aspiration, and commitment

But I must return to the main question of this blog, namely how to get students to appreciate this ultimate aim, and to engage with it.

As to the appreciation, I have already hinted that simply providing students with a common and complete vocabulary for thinking about thinking is likely to be interesting, if not inspiring, to them.
What student would not be impressed to be told that their brain/mind is capable of 26 different ‘moves’, and indeed has been making them daily – but without their even realising it?

And then what student would not aspire to become better at some, if not all, of these moves – to become ‘good’ at thinking AHEAD (predicting or aiming), for example, or thinking BACK (remembering or reflecting)?

Of course, some students will still need to be encouraged – motivated – to commit themselves to this aspiration, and to the journey involved.

Getting better at EXPLAINING, for example, involves long-term commitment to expanding one’s vocabulary, and to deploying words with care.

Getting better at WEIGHING UP (evaluating) involves deep commitment to open-mindedness and fairness.

And getting better at balancing ZOOMING OUT and ZOOMING IN involves commitment to the move most fundamental for metacognition – being able to step back from time to time and look at the whole picture, before deciding which aspect to focus on next – a balancing cycle we all repeat all the time, again usually without realising it.

Unlocking the full benefits of metacognition

Metacognition is not just the ability to manage your thinking better in various ways. It is the ability, I maintain, to manage your whole self – your feelings and actions as well as your thinking.

That includes the ability to recognise what is in your interest as well as what you are interested in, and to commit to some actions that might not be as appealing as others.

I realise that it is asking a lot of young people to reach the level of self-awareness where they are completely self-motivated in this way. So, I repeat that young people need steady encouragement from their teachers to be better thinkers, as well as just better learners.

But I think that there is an even greater intrinsic value to becoming more metacognitive – more self-aware and more self-managing.

To sum up, then, I am saying that part of motivating students to become metacognitive is to spell out to them what metacognition is, so that they know how they could actively develop that capacity in themselves.

In my next blog post, I will do a bit more explaining of metacognition, since I think it is not as well understood, even by educationalists, as it might be. ‘Thinking about your thinking’ is a good starting explanation, but it lacks some vital ingredients. Other accounts are similarly too narrow, and rather formulaic.

Metacognition is potentially a key to fuller and richer living, not just more proficient learning. It should, then, be a driving concept for all schools and teachers.

Roger Sutcliffe is Director of DialogueWorks and Creator of the Thinking Moves A-Z. He taught at both junior and senior level (English and Maths) for over 25 years, and has been an independent educational consultant, specialising in Philosophy for Children and Teaching Thinking, for the last 25 years. He is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Roger is currently collaborating with NACE on a four-part course based on the Thinking Moves A-Z, open to schools across all phases and contexts. If you missed the first session, it’s not too late to join! Contact us to arrange access to the recording of Session 1, and live participation in the remaining three sessions.

Anjali Patel, Lead Advisory Teacher, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE)

The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) is an independent UK charity, and English Association, dedicated to raising the literacy achievement of children by putting quality literature at the heart of all learning. 

It is a charity with a national and international reputation for providing excellent literacy training and resources for primary schools, based on extensive research and best practice.

CLPE’s core beliefs and mission align with those of NACE in that we believe it is every child’s right to achieve and to be given the opportunities and experiences necessary to thrive.

What is Power of Reading?

CLPE’s research around the importance of using quality texts as the basis for English planning and quality teaching, and to provide reflective professional development, is embodied in our flagship training programme: the Power of Reading. 

Built on 50 years of CLPE’s research, the Power of Reading explores the impact high-quality literature has on children’s engagement and attainment as readers and the link between reading and children’s writing development, supported by creative teaching approaches to develop a whole-school curriculum, which fosters a love of reading and writing to raise achievement in literacy. 

In short, we recommend the kinds of books that provide challenge and opportunity for sustained shared study in whole-class English lessons with detailed teaching sequences that enable teachers across all primary Key Stages to work in depth with the best children’s literature being published today. 

When ‘broad and balanced’ became overloaded and surface-level

So why do we believe should Power of Reading be at the heart of any English curriculum? 

At CLPE, our school members are integral to our work. We benefit from thousands of schools and teachers being part of that CLPE community and this means we can draw on our relationship with and research in these schools to design professional development programmes and teaching resources that remain relevant.

The Power of Reading programme is refined each year, informed by the evaluations of participants and to take into account new research or statutory guidance or developments from the DfE and Ofsted and to support our schools to interpret and implement policy and guidance with confidence and integrity to what we know works.

In recent years, the issues raised with us by teachers and leaders on our INSETs and training sessions has been overridingly related to concerns around understanding how to use language to communicate meaning and for effect, both orally and in writing; and in editing, refining and response to writing. Perhaps their views resonate with you?

“Children are not motivated to edit their work beyond proofreading for spelling or other ‘surface features’.”

“There is so much curriculum content, we are teaching too much at a surface level rather than teaching at depth, particularly in writing.”

“The EYFS curriculum is too constrained for periods of sustained shared thinking to happen. Reduced time is spent at play, with more carpet time ‘sitting and listening’.”

“Responses to texts don’t have depth, children aren’t able to go below the surface and be reflective and evaluative.”

“Some set structures and routines, e.g. ‘we have to do writing every day’, ‘we have to do grammar on a Wednesday’ are barriers to developing effective practice, particularly in writing.” 

“Not enough time and expertise in how to respond to writing as readers (teachers and children) – text references are features-based, not drawing on language and composition for effect.”

Providing depth to close the disadvantage gap

It is interesting to explore these commonly shared views through the lens of inclusion and to make the connection between being ‘more able’ and the kinds of experiences that lead to this opportunity to thrive and become highly literate.

Children from privileged backgrounds are more likely to experience the kinds of book ownership and book sharing experiences that support them to deepen their reader response and understanding of the world so that – in school – they can begin to explore how authors, illustrators or poets can achieve this response and how they themselves can make meaning for a reader in their own writing.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more reliant on classroom routines and resources to be able to access and make connections with high-quality, representative children’s literature; to engage in daily book sharing experiences; develop deeper reader response through sustained book talk; and, as Frank Smith (1982) put it, ‘join the literacy club’ (1).

If teachers are saying they are constrained by an overloaded curriculum or lack opportunity to develop subject knowledge through quality professional development (2), the English curriculum will become increasingly disjointed and ‘surface’ level with a disadvantage gap that grows ever wider. When what all teachers want is to give every child the opportunity to work at greater depth whatever their starting point. 

The last thing we want is for only privileged children to be afforded the benefits of challenge and so we must provide an equitable curriculum that enables all children to be motivated to make and create meaning with rich texts through non-reductive teaching approaches and with expert teachers.

And this is why we believe at CLPE that the Power of Reading is as necessary today as it was 20 years ago, if not more so.

The impact of a reading-rich English curriculum

The Power of Reading programme stems from CLPE’s seminal research publication The Reader in the Writer (3). This research aimed to investigate how children's writing might be influenced by studying challenging literary texts in the classroom. 

The findings from that research serve as the backbone to CLPE’s training programme and they are at the heart of the Power of Reading teaching sequences that support our members to develop an evidence-led literacy curriculum in their own classrooms. 

After 20 years, and with thousands of teachers trained across the UK and internationally, the programme continues to evidence impact on teachers and children whose schools have participated in the training. All the evidence we collect to measure impact continues to teach us how powerful reading can be for both children’s academic attainment and wider learning and development.

An independent evaluation by Leeds Trinity University reported on the impact of using Power of Reading in 11 Bradford schools from Autumn 2018 to Spring 2019 (4). The report shows that children in these schools made accelerated progress and the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils was significantly narrowed.

 
More recently, in evaluating the impact of Power of Reading on children in the Early Years (5), the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers was smaller in research schools compared to all pupils within the local area. And when we compared the engagement and attainment of project children at the start and end of their Reception year, the findings were significant with double the number of children working at age-related expectations in Language and Literacy Areas of Learning.

Key recommendations for a challenging English curriculum

So what can we learn from this research to support classroom practice? 

If we can create an English curriculum that is evidenced to close the disadvantage gap through exposure to and engagement in high-quality texts leading to increased world and vocabulary knowledge and writing outcomes in which children make deliberate choices for their own readers, we are creating a curriculum in which all children have access to experiences that increase their self-efficacy and the chance to be more able.

Our Associate Schools – in some of the most disadvantaged communities in England – observe children working at and achieving greater depth and this is articulated beautifully in a recent case study from the team at Miriam Lord Community Primary School in Bradford. 

The Power of Reading practice and provision at Miriam Lord – and the outcomes observed – connect deeply with NACE’s core principles and can be framed as key recommendations for a challenging English curriculum:

• Ensure teachers have strong subject knowledge of high-quality children’s literature so they can give children access to a range of literary forms within and across all year groups.

“[The children] can talk with a greater depth of knowledge of authors… so their ability to compare themes, characters, likes, dislikes is so much better than it ever was and then that communicates into the writing.”

Find out more about our Power of Reading English curriculum maps.

• Choose books in which they see their own and other realities represented so that you can build authentic reader and writer identities in all children which allow them to develop and demonstrate their abilities. 

“The children need to see themselves in books – or at least an element of their lives – in books. They need access to books that they can connect to and that will draw them in and I think the book choices we give them here give them a bigger hook, certainly than the book choices I had when I was growing up.”

Find out more about CLPE’s Reflecting Realities Research.

• Use a range of non-reductive, social and creative teaching approaches to deepen children’s understanding and broaden their experiences, including drama, artwork and storytelling.

“It provides lots of opportunities for immersion and exploration which is really important for a number of children that come to our school because they’ve got deprivation of experience so they don’t get to have those exciting days out or lots of real-world experiences so the books give them that and then they get to participate in role play and activities which enthuse them which then feeds into their writing process.”

Find out about CLPE’s recommended teaching approaches.

• Follow an authentic writing process in which children are making meaning from well-crafted written language, then engage in making conscious choices with their own writing. Focus not on the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ when making such choices, within a community of readers and writers. 

“It puts children’s enjoyment at the centre of everything. It’s not focused solely on the final written output and the success criteria which was the case for a number of years and it made the whole writing process quite onerous and quite boring for children.” 

Find out more about CLPE’s reader into writing research.

• Make explicit the connections children can make between growing literacy knowledge and skills and in wider curriculum work so that children have opportunity to thrive across a range of contexts and throughout the curriculum. 

“It has wider themes threaded through it like geography, history, citizenship so it’s not just English as a stand-alone subject.”

Find out more about the Power of Reading books recommended for each Key Stage.

References
(1) Joining the Literacy Club. Further Essays into Education, Frank Smith (Heinemann, 1987)
(2) Independent review of teachers’ professional development in schools: phase 2 findings (Ofsted, May 2024)
(3) The Reader in the Writer, Myra Barrs and Valerie Cork (CLPE, 2000)
(4) Leeds Trinity University report on the impact of Power of Reading in the Exceed Academies Trust, Bradford (2019)
(5) The Power of Reading in the Early Years (CLPE, 2023)

Additional resources and support

• Find out how you can get involved in CLPE’s Power of Reading programme
• Join NACE and CLPE for a free live webinar on Tuesday 17th June

Plus: save the date! On Friday 3rd October NACE and CLPE are collaborating on a “member meetup” event (free for staff at NACE member schools) exploring approaches to sustain pleasure and challenge in reading and literacy across Key Stages 2 and 3. Details coming soon to the NACE community calendar.

Holme Grange School's Tom Greenwood shares six steps to maximise the impact of your practical science lessons.

Science is more than just memorising facts and following instructions. True scientific thinking requires critical analysis, problem-solving, and creativity. Practical science provides the perfect platform for developing these skills, pushing students beyond basic understanding and into the realm of higher-order thinking.

Why challenge matters in science education

Practical science sits at the peak of Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), requiring students not just to remember and understand but to apply, analyse, evaluate, and create. These skills are essential for developing scientifically literate individuals who can tackle real-world problems with confidence and insight.

Steps to maximizing the impact of practical science

To truly challenge students and develop their higher-order thinking, practical science lessons must be carefully structured. Here’s how:

Step 1: Solve real-world problems

Practical science activities should be grounded in real-world applications. When students see the relevance of their experiments, their engagement increases. For example, testing water purity or designing a simple renewable energy system connects scientific principles to everyday life.

Step 2: Get the groups right

Collaboration is key in scientific exploration. Thoughtful grouping of students – pairing diverse skill levels or encouraging peer mentoring – can enhance problem-solving and communication skills.

Step 3: Maintain a relentless focus on variables

From Year 5 to Year 11, students should develop a keen understanding of variables. This means recognising independent, dependent, and control variables and understanding their importance in experimental design.

Step 4a: Leave out a variable

By removing a key variable from an experiment, students are forced to think critically about the design and purpose of their investigation. They must determine what’s missing and how it affects the outcome.

Step 4b: Omit the plan

Instead of providing a step-by-step method, challenge students to devise their own experimental plans. This pushes them to apply their understanding of scientific concepts and fosters creativity in problem-solving.

Step 5: Analyse data like a pro

Teaching students to collect, visualise, and interpret data is crucial. Using AI tools to display class results can make data analysis more engaging and accessible. By linking their findings back to the research question, students develop deeper analytical skills.

Step 6: When practicals go wrong (or right!)

Failure is an integral part of scientific discovery. Encouraging students to reflect on unexpected results – whether positive or negative – teaches resilience, adaptability, and critical thinking.

Bonus step: Harness the power of a Science Challenge Club

A Science Challenge Club can provide a platform for students to explore scientific questions beyond the curriculum. Such clubs foster independent thinking and offer opportunities for students to work on long-term investigative projects, deepening their understanding and enthusiasm for science.

Final thoughts: why practical science is essential

Engaging students in hands-on science doesn’t just make lessons more interesting – it equips them with crucial skills:

• Critical thinking: encourages deeper questioning and problem-solving.
• Collaboration: strengthens teamwork and communication.
• Real-world problem solving: helps students connect theory to practice.

As educators, we can design activities that challenge high-achieving students, encourage independent experiment design, and foster strong analytical skills. By doing so, we prepare students not only for exams but for real-world scientific challenges.

The future of science lies in the hands of the next generation. Let’s ensure they have the skills to think critically, innovate boldly, and explore fearlessly.

Related reading and resources:

• NACE subject-specific resources: primary science
• NACE subject-specific resources: secondary science

Amanda Hubball, Deputy Head and More Able Lead at Alfreton Nursery School, outlines the use of “thinking booklets” to embed challenge into the early years setting.

At Alfreton Nursery School, staff believe that children need an intrinsic level of challenge to enhance learning. This challenge is not always based around adding symbols to a maths problem or introducing scientific language to the magnet explorations. An early years environment has countless opportunities for challenge and this challenge can be provided in creative ways.  

Thinking booklets: invitations to think and talk

Within the nursery environment, Alfreton has created curriculum zones. These zones lend themselves to curriculum progression, whilst also providing a creative thread of enquiry which runs through all areas. Booklets can be found in each space and these booklets ask abstract questions and offer provocations for debate. Drawing on the pedagogical approach Philosophy for Children (p4c), we use these booklets to ensure classroom spaces are filled with invitations to think and talk.

Literacy booklets

Booklets within the literacy area help children to reflect on the concepts of reading and writing, whilst promoting communication, breadth of vocabulary and the skills to present and justify an opinion.

For example, within the “Big Question: Writing” booklet, staff and children can find the following questions:

• What is writing?
• If nobody could read, would we still need to write?

Alongside these and other questions, there are images of different types of writing. Musical notation, cave drawings, computer text and graffiti to name but a few. Children are empowered to discuss what their understanding of writing actually is and whether others think the same. Staff are careful not to direct conversations or present their own views.  

Maths booklets

Maths booklets are based around all aspects of the subject: shape, size, number. . .

• If a shape doesn’t have a name, is it still a shape?
• What is time?
• If you could be a circle or a triangle, which would you choose and why?

Questions do not need to be based around developing subject knowledge, and the more abstract and creative the question, the more open to all learners the booklets become.  

Children explore the questions and share views. On revisiting these questions another day, often opinions will change or become further embellished. Children become aware that listening to different points of view can influence thinking.

Creative questions

Developing the skills of abstract thought and creative thinking is a powerful gift and children enjoy presenting their theories, whilst sometimes struggling to understand that there is no right or wrong answer. For the more analytical thinkers, being asked to consider whether feelings are alive – leading to an exploration of the concept “alive” – can be highly challenging. Many children would prefer to answer, “What is two and one more?”  

Alfreton Nursery School’s culture of embracing enquiry, open mindset and respect for all supports children’s levels of tolerance, whilst providing cognitive challenge and opportunities for aspirational discourse. The use of simple strategies to support challenge in the classroom ensures that challenge for all is authentically embedded into our early years practice.  

Read more from Alfreton Nursery School:

• Building metacognition: breaking down barriers to learning
• Environmental education in the early years: intent, implementation, impact
• 5 steps to embed metacognition in the early years
• 4 top tips for implementing P4C into nursery

Amanda Hubball, Deputy Head and More Able Lead at Alfreton Nursery School, explores the power of metacognition in empowering young people to overcome potential barriers to achievement.  

Disadvantage presents itself in different ways and has varying levels of impact on learners. It is important to remember that disadvantage is wider than children who are in receipt of pupil premium or children who have a special educational need. Disadvantage can be based around family circumstances, for example bereavement, divorce, mental health… Disadvantages can be long-term or short-term and the fluidity of disadvantage needs to be acknowledged in order for educators to remain effective and vigilant for all children, including more able learners. If we accept that disadvantage can impact any child at any time, then it is essential that we provide all children with the tools they need to navigate challenge.    

More able learners are as vulnerable to the impact of disadvantage as other learners and indeed research would suggest that outcomes for more able learners are more dramatically impacted by disadvantage than outcomes for other children. A cognitive toolbox that is familiar, understood and accessible at all times, can be a highly effective support for learners when there are barriers to progress. By ensuring that all learners are taught metacognition from the beginning of their educational journey and year on year new metacognition skills are integrated, a child is empowered to maintain a trajectory for success.       

How can metacognition reduce barriers to learning?         

Metacognition supports children to consciously access and manipulate thinking strategies, thus enabling them to solve problems. It can allow them to remain cognitively engaged for longer, becoming emotionally dysregulated less frequently. A common language around metacognition enables learners to share strategies and access a clear point of reference, in times of vulnerability. Some more able learners can find it hard to manage emotions related to underachievement. Metacognition can help children to address both these emotional and cognitive demands.

In order for children to impact their long-term memory and fully embed metacognitive strategies, educators need to teach in many different ways. Metacognition needs to be visually reflected in the learner’s environment, supporting teachers to teach and learners to learn.   

How do we do this at Alfreton Nursery School?

At Alfreton Nursery School we ensure that discourse is littered with practical examples of how conscious thinking can result in deeper understanding. Spontaneous conversations are supported by visual aids around the classroom, enabling teachers and learners to plan and reflect on thinking strategies. Children are empowered to integrate the language of metacognition as they explain their learning and strive for greater understanding.

Adults in school use metacognitive terms when talking freely to each other, exposing children to their natural use. Missed opportunities are openly shared within the teaching team, supporting future developments.

Within enrichment groups, metacognition is a transparent process of learning. Children are given metacognitive strategies at the beginning of enhancement opportunities and encouraged to reflect and evaluate at the end. Whether working indoors or outdoors, with manipulatives or abstract concepts and individually or in a group, metacognition is a vehicle through which all learners can access lesson content.

We use the ‘Thinking Moves’ metacognition framework (you can read more about this here). Creative application of this framework supports the combination of metacognition words, to make strings of thinking strategies. For example, a puppet called FRED helps children to Formulate, Respond, Explain and Divide their learning experiences. A QUEST model helps children to follow a process of Questioning, Using, Explaining, Sizing and Testing.

Metacognition supports children of all abilities, ages and backgrounds, to overcome barriers to learning. Disadvantage is thus reduced.

Moving from intent to implementation

Systems and procedures at Alfreton Nursery School serve to scaffold day to day practice and provide a backdrop of expectations and standards. In order to best serve more able children who are experiencing disadvantage, these frameworks need to be explicit in their inclusivity and flexibility. Just as every policy, plan, assessment, etc will address the needs of all learners – including those who are more able – so all these documents explicitly address how metacognition will support all learners. To ensure that visions move beyond ‘intent’ and are fully implemented, systems need to guide provision through a metacognitive lens.  

Metacognition is woven into all curriculum documents. A systematic and dynamic monitoring system, which tracks the progress and attainment of all learners, ensures that children have equal focus on cognition and emotion, breaking down barriers with conscious intent.

 

At Alfreton Nursery School, those children who are more able and experiencing disadvantage receive a carefully constructed meta-curriculum which scaffolds their journey towards success, in whatever context that may manifest itself. Children learn within an environment where teachers can articulate, demonstrate and inculcate the power of metacognition, enabling children to be the best that they can be.

How is your school empowering and supporting young people to break down potential barriers to learning and achievement? Read more about NACE’s research focus for this academic year, and contact us to share your experiences.