Thinking skills complement the six key skills and are embedded in the National Curriculum. Thinking combines the related structures and processes of perception, memory, forming ideas, language and use of symbols - the basic cognitive skills which underlie the ability to reason, to learn and to solve problems. The National Curriculum stresses that when pupils use thinking skills they focus on 'knowing how' to learn as well as 'knowing what' to learn. For pupils with learning difficulties, the development of thinking skills also involves working on sensory awareness, perception and early cognitive skills.

Three combined processes determine success in thinking:

• input - obtaining and organising knowledge through sensory awareness and perception to confirm 'what I know'
• control - thinking through a situation and making actions meaningful, for example, planning, decision making and evaluating
• output - strategies for using knowledge and solving problems that combine 'what I do' with 'what I know', for example, remembering, and thinking about and generating new ideas.

To begin to make sense of the world, a pupil must perceive, attend to or take in sensory information. For some pupils with learning difficulties, sensory and/or physical impairments may make it difficult for them to select, separate and explain incoming information. For others, their responses to information and their storage and retrieval of it may be affected.

Ways to remember information and access and use thinking skills may need to be taught explicitly to pupils with learning difficulties. Learning to think is not achieved on its own. Thinking takes place in a social context and is influenced and moulded by the culture and environment in which pupils learn.

Richard and Joel

Richard and Joel are being encouraged to answer and ask questions to show their thinking processes. They are in year 4 and are working together to make a model aeroplane from found materials. They are learning to negotiate with each other about how they make the plane from the materials they have, and which are the best to use. The teacher encourages them to listen to each other's ideas and asks a series of questions that encourages their thinking: 'How can you stick those bits together? I wonder what will happen if you try the glue? Now why doesn't that stick them together? What will happen if you try the sticky tape? Why does that work better?'

Sensory awareness and perception

Sensory awareness and perception skills are:

• use of vision, for example, fixing, inspecting, tracking, focusing
• use of hearing, for example, listening, responding to sound
• use of touch, for example, stroking different textures, squeezing materials with different densities
• coordination of the use of senses, for example, movement and vision, touch and taste.

Early thinking skills

Early thinking skills include:

• predicting and anticipating
• remembering, for example, by picturing, verbal rehearsal and clustering
• the understanding of cause and effect
• linking objects, events and experiences
• thinking creatively and imaginatively, for example, through play and experimentation, through the discovery and application of new connections and ideas and through active exploration.

Predicting and anticipating - Kulsum

Kulsum is learning to anticipate routines and to look and attend. She particularly likes glittering, moving objects. Each day, after arriving at school, she is given an agreed-on, glittering object of reference (a puppet) and is taken to a quiet room. Once she is positioned correctly and is comfortable, Kulsum is encouraged to look at the moving puppet, which tells the story, using sensory information, of what will happen in her school day. In the darkened room, with a soft white light shining on the area of work, Kulsum develops skills such as:

• paying attention
• using her limited vision
• responding to a familiar adult
• being able to predict and anticipate events.

Remembering - Abdullah

Abdullah, a year 3 pupil, finds it difficult to remember the tasks he has to do and their sequence when he gets to school. Clare, the transport escort who brings him to his classroom, reminds him to go to his work tray, where he takes out his 'thinking board'. On a vertical strip of Velcro are several symbols to aid his recall, of a coat, toilet, fridge (to store his lunch), work. As he completes each task, he lifts the symbol off the board and places it in a pocket at the back. On returning to the classroom, he takes his independent work from his tray and completes it. His final task is to remember to tell a member of staff that he has finished.

Thinking creatively and imaginatively - Michael

In art, Michael has been asked to make handprints. He looks round and sees a large leaf. He spontaneously puts this in the paint and then on the paper.