Effects of a Cognitive Acceleration Programme on Year 1 pupils (Updated)
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Thinking skills
What were the main components of the programme?
The intervention consisted of a series of activities aimed at presenting cognitive challenge to 5 and 6 year old children. A key feature of the process was that it should provide opportunities for children to engage in discussing and tackling problems together (social construction), and in explaining their thinking (metacognition). (Click here for an explanation of these terms). The main features of the programme were that:
- there were 3 introductory ‘listening’ activities;
- there were 26 cognitive acceleration activities;
- each activity took about 30 – 40 minutes; and
- six children undertook the activity each day, so that a whole class of thirty were covered by the end of the week;
Initially, ‘listening’ activities were introduced to familiarise the children with the working methods of the activities. Special emphasis was placed on listening to others, respecting others’ views, being able to participate in debate constructively, and so on.
