Consultants
Children from Comber PS and St. Mary's show off their animations with the team, from left, Tony Scullion (CCEA, project leader), Carol Weatherall (BELB), Marian Hamill (CCEA, PD & MU), Liz Weir and Corrina Askin.
Malachy McDaid (CCEA Multimedia, Project Manager) with Liz and Corrina.
Carol Weatherall
Carol is a member of the Belfast Education and Library Board CASS team, with responsibility for school improvement. She was a core member of the Wise Up and Think project team and has practical experience of developing and delivering training in Thinking Skills to schools involved in the ACTS project. She sets out below her involvement with the ACTS project and her ideas to use fairy tales to bring thinking skills into Key Stage 1.
"In 2001, I (together with four other colleagues, one from each of the other Education and Library Boards), was asked to become involved in the ACTS II Project; an Interboard research project led by professor Carol McGuinness, Queen's University Belfast. See details at web link below:
Sustainable Thinking Classrooms
Having been exploring many innovative approaches to improving effective learning and teaching, as part of our ongoing development team work in school improvement, the opportunity to work with Professor Carol McGuinness was very exciting and so I readily agreed and embarked on what was to be a very exciting journey.
My role as CASS officer was to support the teachers between the focussed training days. This took the form of, for example, cluster group sessions, individual teacher meetings, in class support, information sessions with principals and staff and, if requested, INSET with whole staff.
Teachers were encouraged not to see this as an 'add on' but to look at what they were currently teaching and to select where the infusion of a thinking skills approach would deepen and enrich the learning experience.
It became evident that an awareness and development of a language for talking about thinking was paramount and that managing group work was essential to the success of the thinking skills in action and so these complementary elements also played a key role in the training.
The ACTS II project focussed on KS2 teachers but the knowledge that thinking does not begin at KS2 prompted me to make an application to the DDGP (Development and Dissemination of Good Practice) fund at BELB in order to facilitate training for teachers who would like to work with me in promoting ACTS methodologies at KS1.
The training centred on the premise that at KS1 'the thinking is the same, it's just the context that changes' and so we considered and explored a range of fairy tales and real-life contexts which would support the breadth of thinking through ACTS at KS1.
Realising now that 'thinking' is very much at the heart of the Revised Curriculum, it is my hope that many more schools will explore ACTS as a route to meeting the changing needs of children in the 21st century... and if in the future, you don't want to hear the question, 'Miss what will I do now?' just as often in your classroom then don't just teach them what to think but teach them how to think... for themselves!"
Lynne Bianchi
Lynne is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University, developing, and managing a range of projects within the 'Personal Capabilities Programme'.
Lynne has worked on a number of curriculum development and research projects with organisations such as CCEA (Northern Ireland), QCA (England) and Manachester LA and Cape UK's Creative Space initiative, which focus on the development of generic skills. Her work on Personal Capabilities has informed CCEA's Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Framework.
She has co-authored related publications, such as Smart Science, and pursues consultancy work with organisations interested in the area of personal skills and capabilities development from primary to secondary school level.
Lynne has advocated the use of stories at Key Stage 1, for example using the Mister Men and other texts to introduce and develop personal capabilities and create an environment for self-assessment.
Marian Hamill
Marian is Assistant Principal Officer for Personal Development and Mutual Understanding in CCEA. She has been at the forefront of developing resources to support Personal Development in the primary curriculum. This work has informed many of the discussion prompts and online activities with each story. Her recent work has involved the development of the Living, Learning, Together resource to support Personal Development and Mutual Understanding for Year 5.