ABSTRACT
Play is diverse and fluid and rightly beyond the control of adults. Creative and critical thinking is similar in its ownership and variety, but is more internal. Through critical thinking, we consider these possibilities, how to pursue, filter, refine and explore them. Assessing children's thinking is fundamentally about reporting upon how they learn and how they achieve learning, and so do not require quantifying or quality statements; we are describing the nature of the routes, not the journey time or destination. Reporting upon creative and critical thinking when documenting learning provides information on the interpretation of how each unique child learns. Attention to thinking in assessment does more than prompt us to include how a child learns; it considers how our provision provides the landscape for thinking. Higher-order thinking skills are essential for all humans and are part of the thinking that we all do every day.
