Teach CoRT Thinking Tools…

and equip your students to become excellent lifelong thinkers.

"...CoRT is straightforward, ingenious, and quite easy to apply. Intelligence can be taught with CoRT." --David Perkins, Ph.D

80850--CoRT Thinking Lessons--CoRT 1 Breadth Thinking Tools: The Complete Learning, Planning, and Teaching Guide for Teachers, Administrators, and Home Schoolers, Edward de Bono, 198 pages. Click here to read the contents and introduction section PDF

80851 Student Notes CoRT 1 Breadth Thinking Tools: Easy to Follow Learning Guide for Students Aged 8-Adult, Edward de Bono, 20 pages. Easy to follow student work cards that reinforce the purpose of each thinking tools. 

A Message from Edward de Bono: CoRT Thinking Lessons have been taught in schools since the mid 1970s. They have since become the most widely used school materials for the direct teaching of thinking as a basic skill worldwide.

All of this experience has contributed to developing CoRT Thinking Lessons that

1.  Are practical and hands on in nature.
2. Can be taught as a separate subject--thinking skills--or embedded in existing curriculum to strengthen student learning and develop independent thinkers.
3. Are focused on equipping students to become effective, open-minded thinkers--critical, creative, constructive, and comprehensive.
4. Address the increasing interest and recognition for the need to teach thinking as a basic skill along with reading, writing, and mathematics; the traditional basics.

5. Can be used in a wide variety of situations from schools in disadvantaged areas to elite schools to students being home schooled.

6. Appeal to a wide range of ages (6-adult) and abilities (IQs of 75-140).

It used to be felt that a person with a high IQ would naturally be an effective thinker. This doesn't seem to be the case. Some people with high IQs turn out to be relatively ineffective thinkers. Some people with much more humble IQs turn out to be more effective thinkers. Here is my definition of thinking:

Thinking: "The operational skill with which intelligence acts upon experience."

For example, if IQ is equivalent to the horsepower of a car then thinking skill is equivalent to driving skill. Just because a car has huge horsepower doesn't mean the car will be driven well. It takes a skilled driver.

This important realization has led many schools for the exceptionally gifted to teach CoRT Thinking Lessons as a deliberate attempt to help their gifted students avoid the "intelligence trap" which occurs when a high IQ  is not accompanied by effective thinking skills.

The general method used is what I call the "glasses method." If you have poor eyesight you cannot see the world clearly. With glasses you can see the world more clearly. As a result your actions can be more appropriate and you behavior more effective. Experience has shown that students who learn these thinking tools develop a much broader view of situation. They are more complete in their thinking.

Edward de Bono

CoRT Thinking Lessons

1. Challenge “gifted” students and strengthens “remedial” students.
2. Equips students with practical tools to become excellent lifelong thinkers--creative, constructive, critical, and productive.
3. Helps students learn to think things through before acting.
4. Enables schools to infuse the teaching of thinking across all age and ability levels.
5. Develops specific thinking skills to improve performance in all subject areas.
6. Helps to improve yearly assessment scores.
7. Provides structured discussion tools for group work.

The CoRT Thinking Program

• CoRT is broken into 6 segments of 10 lessons each. Each lesson teaches a new thinking tool.
• CoRT 1 Breadth Thinking Lessons are taught first. Next, you can teach the segment that best meets students’ needs, or you can teach the whole program systematically.
• The lessons follow the same format for consistency.
• Practice topics are provided that help students learn how each tool works.
• Reproducible student work cards are included in the Teachers books.
• Each student is to receive a copy of each student work card.
• Once students learn each tool teachers are encouraged to assign relevant thinking topics of their own design.

CoRT 1: Breadth—helps students broaden perception—they should know more about each thinking situation after using the tools than they knew before they started.

CoRT 2: Organization—gives students a variety of tools to organize their thinking.

CoRT 3: Interaction—helps students observe the thinking involved in arguments, how a point of view is presented or defended, and the value and types of evidence.

CoRT 4: Creativity—students learn tools to generate fresh new solutions to challenges.

CoRT 5: Information and Feeling—tools to separate emotions from facts.

CoRT 6: Action—begins with the purpose and ends with specific action steps for the implementation of the outcome of thinking.