1. You need to plan a schedule or time-frame for teaching the skills or tools of thinking first; running Thinking Skills sessions is an excellent idea. Start small and sensible. Focus on one or two particular skills or tools you want to address, such as creativity and analysing, and build up your repertoire from there. Remember to enjoy what you're teaching!

2. The second step is to begin using the tools, transferring them into your regular lessons. Having a TOOLBOX column handy alongside your regular planning sheet may help you to focus on this transfer. Encouraging your students to use a specific Thinking Skills folder or book that they can refer to, may help them to recognise that they have a thinking toolbox ready at hand for transfer to other subjects or areas.

3. Limited budget or limited time? I'd suggest you invest initially in some of Edward de Bono's Six Hats series. Follow this for older students with Book 1 of the CoRT Thinking series by Edward de Bono. These tailor-made lessons plus the further extension activities in the book How To Teach Thinking Skills by Jean Edwards, will get you well started. Meanwhile, you can be assimilating the information in How To Teach Thinking Skills and either making up your own resources from the ideas and examples provided, or if you're already too busy (!), you can use the examples to help you to decide what thinking tools you want to teach and what resources to purchase.

4. A Tip: Don't go for a 'grab-bag of activities'. For a defensible thinking skills programme, you MUST have a specific aim in mind, an outcome you can see or measure (which is why quite a few of the resources in the above book have evaluation records for you). The skills or tools must be transferable! Slow and steady is a sensible rule. Share techniques and models with your students so that you - and they - can systematically incorporate thinking skills into your programme

What are the main Thinking Skills?

1. Creativity

2. Critical thinking

3. Problem-solving

"Where do I start' What exactly do I DO?"

The following books are all recommended for teachers who know that they want to teach thinking skills, and probably have some idea of the underlying theories and value of teaching thinking, but who need some specifics. With photocopiable activities, clear explanations both of the underpinnings and of the activities, and with sample student responses.

Following are a couple of recommended ThinkShop titles to get you started: