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Thinking Skills & Personal Capabilities

Thinking skills are tools that help children to go beyond the acquisition of knowledge in order to search for meaning, apply ideas, analyse patterns and relationships, create and design something new and monitor and evaluate their progress.  Personal and interpersonal skills and capabilities underpin success in all aspects of life.

Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Progression Maps at Key Stage 3

Subject-specific progression maps have been developed to:

• foster a shared language which pupils and teachers can use to focus on the acquisition and development of the Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities; and
• support assessment and facilitate making judgements about pupils’ progress in the Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities within subject strands.

These can be downloaded from the right-hand side of the page.

Introduction to Thinking Skills & Personal Capabilities

Taken from the DVD ‘Planning for Implementation’, this video clip gives a broad overview to Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilties.

Thinking Skills & Personal Capabilities CPD Materials

The following materials were used in many schools to deliver the first phase of Northern Ireland Curriculum training.  They remain a useful resource to support ongoing staff development in Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities.  Notes for the training facilitator are included in the 'Notes' page of the PowerPoint. The Activity and Resource sheets are included in a separate document.

Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities CPD Materials

ZIP, 2.2 MB

Thinking Skills & Personal Capabilities - Useful Websites and Links