I have just been at the DFES G&T conference in London and part of the presentation that I gave involved posting material about an action research project that I was involved in at my school on my website: Innovation project There is a history project about using thinking skills and active learning to improve GCSE students' writing skills as well as 6 other subjects - Maths, MFL, English, Geography, RE and EaL . Please have a look and let me know what you think.

Excellent contributions, Dan. I'm always pleased when I see Thinking Skills properly embedded in the core and foundation subjects of the National Curriculum rather than as a discrete entity which can so easily become a soon to be forgotten afterthought. I have created links to each of your school's departmental Thinking Skills projects from my subject-based Thinking Skills portal at

http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/nc/thinking/

Keep up the good work!

David Wilson
http://www.specialeducationalneeds.com/

Thanks David, that's great. The project was really successful and very stimulating. I was the co-leader and it was the first time that I had been involved in something like this. The action research model is very effective and this has had a good impact across the school, far greater than any other G&T initiative that we have used before. I shall be passing on details of your website to one and all, a lot of excellent material there too.

I see you have published your work via Ian Dawson's website. I once saw him do a very interesting session where he used the children in the class to show the links between events (he put placards around their heads and moved them around the classroom). Have you have tried to do this to create an "outline essay plan"? It would be something the kids would remember (especially if you props). He did not say this but I suspect it is based on the theory that people remember things better if they are turned into unusual pictures (a common technique used by stage performers).

Another way of doing this is to put "picture" outline essays on the walls of the classroom. If they are funny (puns, etc.) they should be able to remember them in the exam hall.

English as a Foreign Language teachers use techniques like these all the time (as, probably, do MFL and ESL teachers, but I'm not quite sure what they're up to these days).

Grammar Games, by Mario Rinvolucri (CUP, ISBN 0-521-27773-6) will give you a taster, if you're interested.

Sounds great, I'm doing a few essays at the moment, if I have time I'll see if I can come up with something.