Metacognitive Talk in the Classroom

This week's article summary is Metacognitive Talk in the Classroom.

Through the years, I’ve talked about how important metacognition is in helping students (and ourselves) counter unconscious biases they most likely have.

But as you’ll see in the article below, metacognition is simply good pedagogy in the classroom.

Our goal as teachers is to guide our students to be effective problem solvers. Being aware of how we think and how we systematically approach and solve a problem help develop the habit and skills of responsible decision-making.

Metacognition is an intimidating word, yet the classroom strategies below, such as giving students ample time to work with other students, asking open-end questions, having students find multiple ways to a solution, and having kids reflect on how their learning processes are tools most of us use in the classroom to help our students better understand how they learn.

Joe

-------

Psychologists have long advocated the idea of metacognitive talk. Jean Piaget believed that children benefited from being active participants in the construction of knowledge, and Lev S. Vygotsky introduced the idea that students can co-construct knowledge through social interactions. Talking with their peers, asking questions, and debating best approaches to problem-solving help students develop more complex thinking and reasoning skills. Conversations can create productive conflict that helps students develop multiple perspectives, leading to deeper learning.

If students are given clear directions and guidelines for their discussions, interacting with peers can be more effective than working only independently and as effective as working one-on-one with an adult.

However, popular techniques like “turn and talk” to your neighbor may not be structured enough to be effective at co-creating knowledge. During discussions students need to do the following:

• Examine their thinking process and the approach they used in order to identify different ways of solving a particular problem
• Explore diverse strategies or varying viewpoints
• Use active listening strategies to take in and then test out ideas and methods that are different from their own
• Debate or negotiate to reach a consensus in their discussions before presenting to the group.

In practice, this often looks like the teacher talking for a short time at the beginning of the lesson, with students working independently to decide on a strategy and try a skill on their own and then spending the majority of learning time engaged in discussion.

Here are some strategies for encouraging metacognitive talk:

Limiting teacher talk time: The teacher should talk to model the thought process necessary for a new skill or to provide direct instruction, but most of the thinking and reasoning work should be left to the students.

Use open-ended questions and encourage problem-solving: Many times we ask questions that have a correct answer, which means that only students who have already learned the information are likely to talk. Instead, we can try to ask more questions that are open-ended and encourage students to find the answer on their own or explore the process to find the answer collaboratively. Closed questions tend to test recall of specific information, such as “What is the capital of North Carolina?” whereas open-ended questions require students to use what they have learned to demonstrate deeper understanding, apply, analyze, evaluate, or create.

Explaining the steps or outlining the process: Similarly, when they are working independently, students need to get in the habit of focusing on explaining their thinking process and how to arrive at an answer. There are a variety of ways to do this:

• Students can be prompted to focus on process by using an already-solved example problem to explain in words how to get from one step to the next. Similarly, students could correct an incorrectly solved problem, identify the mistake, and explain the process for arriving at the correct solution.
• Students can describe problem-solving steps in words next to a visual representation. They can also create thought bubbles next to a text or the steps of a problem to show their thinking process and make it easier to convey to a partner during discussion.
• Students can compare and contrast their process for solving a problem with their partner’s strategy.

Generating knowledge and new examples: Have students create their own unique examples and then collaborate with a partner to compare and contrast what they came up with and check each other’s work. This will help them test out new ideas, strengthen recall of learned information, and deepen their understanding. Students can create and solve their own math problems, make their own practice test questions and quiz each other to see what they remember from the lesson, assemble a model to demonstrate or try out something they learned, or write their own examples of a particular type of literary work or device. Teachers can also have students generate knowledge after listening to direct instruction or a video. Students can do a free recall where they write down or draw a thinking map of everything they can remember. Then pair them up to compare, check, and sort through what they came up with.

 Taking on a specific role in the critical thinking process: Talk can be used as a scaffold that allows students to engage in assignments with increased rigor. Students can be taught strategies to use, like reciprocal teaching where students work in groups to analyze a complex fiction or nonfiction text or sort through a math word problem, each taking on a specific thinking role in order to practice making predictions, asking questions, clarifying, and summarizing. Partnering on note-taking helps students work through specific reading skills and questions as a group.

Talking to produce thought, or metacognitive talk, is one of the most effective learning methods. By working together, students collectively develop their language, thinking process, and reasoning skills. They monitor, evaluate, and revise their approach to problem-solving in order to become more strategic learners.