Fostering Metacognition in the Classroom

This week’s article summary is Critical Thinking: How to Help Your Students Become Better Learners.

During our preplanning meetings, I mentioned that one of the best ways to foster student learning is through metacognition, or helping students to think about their thinking.

I like this article because it breaks down the learning process into three parts—before, during, after—and then provides questions you can ask your students to help them be more aware of how they’re their learning.

The term metacognition can seem very intimidating to kids—and even adults—yet this article logically breaks down how we all can think about thinking as we “effectively plan, self-monitor, and finally reflect” on any learning endeavor.

I quoted the article’s definition of metacognition during preplanning: “Building awareness, understanding, and control of one’s thought process.”

As a reminder, in addition to metacognition, the three other teaching practices that best support student learning are as follows:

• Clarity of purpose of school assignments: clearly and frequently explaining to children the why, how, when, and how they will demonstrate their learning
• Classroom discussions--with lots of open-ended questions and student-to-student talk
• Formative assessments, specifically the need we all have for frequent feedback

  

Joe

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Encouraging students to build awareness, understanding, and control of their thought processes – also known as metacognition – is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve learning.

It’s all about getting students to think critically about their own learning.

To help students begin to think this way, you can divide the process into three parts:

• Before a task (effective planning)
• During (self-monitoring)
• After (evaluation and reflection).

Help students understand the importance of preparation and an effective approach to setting goals. For good goal setting, you need to include a combination of both short-term and long-term goals, a focus on developing skills (not just desired outcomes), and consideration of potential obstacles. If students know what challenges may come their way, they should be better equipped to overcome them when the time comes.

It’s hard to manage our emotions and thoughts if we aren’t aware of what we’re thinking and feeling, i.e., self-awareness.

Research shows that self-awareness can be developed by encouraging students to keep a diary. It can help students to spot any trends and patterns, making it easier to manage emotions and choose effective thought processes before they get stressed about more difficult tasks.

If a task can be divided into the three stages of before, during and after, then it’s possible to help students improve their metacognition by getting them to ask themselves good questions at each stage:

• Before a task, ask questions such as “Is this similar to previous tasks I’ve done?” and “What should I do first?”
• During a task, questions such as “Am I on the right track?’ and “Who can I ask for help?” ensure students monitor their performance and make adjustments if necessary.
• After a task, students can reflect and learn on their experiences by asking “What went well?”, “What do I need to improve on?” and “What would I do differently next time?”