A Think Tank is simply a group of children working together to come up with a best answer to the questions asked. To do this, they must work together to build on one another's ideas and look with a critical eye at all of the opinions given. The aim is one of understanding and working as a team.

I recommend that you work with the students to begin with so that you can model asking the types of questions that will aid the group's understanding and deepen the discussion as well as "training" everyone to explain their reasoning. For a list of such questions, see page 10. You'll be amazed at how quickly the students will pick up using these questions independently.

You may wish to swap around the members of a Think Tank regularly, but it is important that you leave them together long enough to develop the trust necessary for free and open dialogue. Also, you will find that keeping them together in the same Think Tank for at least a term makes it much easier to assess their progress. If you choose to work with the whole class for the first term or so, split up the discussion by giving them approximately five minutes to talk in small groups at various stages throughout the discussion. After each such "break", bring them back together to report to the larger group. This method allows a lot more dialogue to occur; it's frustrating sitting on a world-changing idea without the opportunity to share it!