NOTES:

*EVIDENCE: (With children aged 5) the teacher and the children worked with facts and opinions.

"After a weekend, when the children and the teacher went to watch their vegetable garden, they watched, amazed and disappointed, that the lettuce that they had grown and taken care of, had watered so lovingly and which had got to 0,5 cm height.... Had disappeared!

One of the children shouted: -A snail! It ate our lettuce!

So, the teacher took the snail, put it into a small bottle and asked the children how they could know if the snail was guilty or not. The teacher asked: What are the facts? They said:

FACTS:

• The lettuce was fine last Friday when we left school.
• The lettuce had disappeared on Monday when we came back to school.
• We found a snail in the vegetable garden.
• We did not find any other animal.
• Nobody is at school during the weekend, so nobody could see what happened with the lettuce.
• Snails like eating lettuce.

Now, what are you opinions?

OPINIONS:

• Some other animal could have eaten the lettuce.
• It is not possible for only one snail to eat all that lettuce.
• It would starve if it did not eat the lettuce.
• Its mother abandoned it, so it ate all the lettuce.

The children watched the vegetable garden once more.

A NEW FACT:

• There were two ants in the vegetable garden.
• One of them had a small piece of lettuce in the mouth.

A NEW OPINION:

• The ants are always hungry and eat night and day.

After stating facts and opinions the snail was declared not guilty.

KINDEGARTEN TEACHER'S COMMENTS ABOUT THE PRACTICE:

• The CoRT lessons were used with children aged three, four and five.
• We found that the concept "interesting" is not easy for the children, so we have to work with it more time.
• Sometimes we need to propose more than an example until they understand what they are asked for.
• We do the practice considering the whole of the children as a group and we write the responses.
• Sometimes another teacher shares the lesson as an observer.
• In occasions, when the practice includes something that is not allowed at home (for example, "walking barefoot") the children find it hard to answer.
• We can see that some of the children use PMI in daily things, after having done the practice.

Comment by Peter de Bono:

This has been a very interesting project excellently executed. In the P.M.I. the 'I' should be ignored with young children, as they do not have that 'database of experience' on which to exercise their intelligence.

• In occasions, when the practice includes something that is not allowed at home (for example, "walking barefoot") the children find it hard to answer.

This is an excellent example of a RULE in which case it may be useful to examine the Factors and then d a P.M.I. as to whether it is a good rule.