Equipment needed and preparation: (Optional) a prop to be the ‘wand’ (I use a chopstick)                                     Starting age: 10 years   ...

The aim of this lesson is for the children to practise their thinking using the topic of grammar/literacy. It is also an explanation of the anxiety or inferiority that we all feel in a classroom situation when things are not going well for us. Most children can’t actually identify the area being made throughout the poem: the author uses wo...

The Philosophy This session is designed to inspire awe and wonder at the unusualness of the world around us and to inspire the idea that things are stranger than we might at first think and to get the children thinking along the same lines as many philosophers: that the world is not as it seems. Many of the pre-Socratics thought that the worl...

BACKGROUND More than a thousand years ago, Muslims from Africa conquered Spain and Portugal. They created their own country and forced the Christian kings out. Islam became the country’s religion. However, there were still many Jews and Christians living there. (2) They were not treated equally to Muslims, but they were tolerated by the...

Stimulus Write the following statements on the board and ask: Are these a) true, b) false, c) neither or d) both? 'I am 20. 'I am me.' 'The Simpsons is a really good programme.' 'I am shopping in Lewisham' (when the speaker is shopping, but not in Lewisham) 'This cake is made of jelly' (whe...

Stimulus Many years ago in Greece they held a competition to find the best painter. The people of Greece loved beauty in all its forms and tried to find the best in all things. Everyone agreed that there were 2 wonderful painters in the city of Athens, but nobody could decide which of the 2 painters was the better artist. Some people preferre...

This session was developed by specialist David Birch on the topic of Newspapers. You might want to run this along with the Knowledge session, using newspaper headlines as the sentences in the Knowledge session. Thinking Game Break the circle on 'lying'. Stimulus (Use the powerpoint attached to take you through the session.) ...

Unicorn Horns - thinking about things that don’t exist This is a development of ‘Nobody’s home’ from The If Odyssey and is designed to get the class thinking about non-existent entities. These include fictional characters of all kinds, but they also include some more controversial examples such as Santa Claus and the T...

Zeus rules the gods of Mount Olympus.  He also rules over the humans.  He rules with a mixture of love and reward as well as control and punishment.  For when the humans do bad things, such as fight wars (get the children to offer some examples of bad things), he throws down large bolts of lightning and causes big thunderstorms to...