Teach-Primary-Issue-19.8

T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG mother who keeps repeating mistakes at a worrying rate. Into this mess arrive six peculiar creatures in her back garden. They are clever, funny, and occasionally contrary. Their mission? To show Agnes that problems aren’t roadblocks, but invitations. And the way forward isn’t always straight ahead. Changing perspective Teachers see the ‘problem bias’ daily. The child who loves describing the issue in a story but loses all steam when asked to write an ending. The maths pupil who stares at a single method, repeats it three times, and insists they “can’t do it”. The class debate that goes in circles because children are more invested in arguing who is right than in finding a workable solution. It’s not ability that trips pupils up; it’s perspective. They only know one way to look at the problem, and when that doesn’t work, they stop. Lateral thinking gives them other doors to open. It tells them it’s not cheating to turn the question upside down or to imagine how someone else might see it. That isn’t failure, it’s thinking. Before the woodcutter Try this tomorrow: tell your class the story of Little Red Riding Hood but stop just before the woodcutter arrives. Ask: “What else could Red do here?” You’ll get chaos at first – poisoned apples, superheroes, calling Childline – but then the magic happens. Someone suggests she could trick the wolf. Another imagines she could turn him vegetarian. Someone will say she could team up with Grandma. Suddenly, the wolf isn’t a dead end but a launchpad. The solution space becomes playful, not perfunctory. You don’t need a full curriculum overhaul to weave lateral thinking into your practice. It can be as simple as asking: “What’s another way to see this?” or “What would the villain say?” It can be about letting children invent three solutions, even if only one is ‘correct’. When I run workshops in schools, I find that children pick this approach up faster than adults. They’re less wedded to being right, less bruised by being wrong. Give them the green light to think differently, and they’re off. Which makes you wonder: what would happen if schools taught ‘thinking’ itself as a subject? Not as an add-on, but as central as maths or literacy. Until then, stories are our best secret weapon. They let us slip in the idea that problems aren’t prizes and solutions aren’t punishments – they’re the real game. TP Sarah Tucker is a novelist, broadcaster, and lecturer in lateral thinking at Cambridge University’s Homerton Changemakers initiative. Her new book, Size Six (Cambridge Children’s Books, £7.99), is out now. sarahtucker.info solution finding, valuing the power of play and humour. One such story is about a girl called Agnes Triptoes. Agnes is 10 years old, prematurely worldly as editor of her school newspaper, and facing both a nemesis next door and a 5 PLAYFUL WAYS... to spark lateral thinking Flip the ending. After finishing a tale, ask pupils to invent three different endings. Encourage them to be silly; the sillier the better. Ban the obvious . When solving a maths word problem, tell the class the most obvious answer is off-limits. They should be encouraged to find at least two other approaches. Play ‘perspective chairs’ . Assign each corner of the classroom a character (hero, villain, bystander, teacher). Choose a problem, and encourage pupils to move seats and argue the problem from that perspective. Play the ‘What’s the question?’ game . Give pupils an answer (e.g., “42” or “a shoelace”) and challenge them to invent as many possible questions as they can. Be your own mistake detectives . When a child repeats an error, frame it as a puzzle: “What is this mistake trying to teach you?” Treat it as a clue, not a failure. www.teachwire.net | 69