Thinker's Keys

Thinker's Keys Explained

The Thinker's Keys are a range of question starters developed by Tony Ryan. They are designed to engage and motivate students in divergent thinking activities and provide a framework for teachers when developing units of work.

There are 20 keys designed to motivate learners in many different contexts to help deepen their thinking and encourage students to think outside the box. Thinker's keys can be used in many ways and situations, they are a really powerful tool that can be used to help unlock critical and creative thinking abilities that ALL learners have. Thinking Keys focus on core thinking skills and must be delivered in context.

• There are 20 thinking keys. 10 purple keys and 10 orange keys. 

• Purple keys represent critical thinking and orange represents creative thinking.

• Each key is a specific thinking process. 

• They are a range of question or task starters.

• They are twenty different activities that introduce different ways of higher-order thinking. 

• They are individual tasks.