Developing Metacognitive Skills in Your Students

By Jane Sutton

Strategies for Teachers

• Model the thought process while teaching the subject matterThis will show the students the process that you are using when thinking

• Verbalize what are you as a teacher is thinking while you are explaining the ideas to the studentsThis reinforces for the students the thinking skills the students should also be using

• Say it out loud to model what the students should be doing to think about a problemAgain this will model to the students the thought process involved and what they should also do

More Strategies

• Teachers should help students to connect the new information to what the students already know

• How?– Do this in beginning of a lesson – Link what is being taught to what students already

know– Teacher should identify what students will be learning– Teachers should explain why it is meaningful or

important what the students will be learning by giving relative examples

• Before a class the teacher can briefly describe what will be taught

This will help the students to know what to expect in the lesson

• At end of class students can write down 3 things that they learned (collected by teacher) and teacher writes on board what he/she felt the 3 things the students should have learned

This will help the students know if they understood the lesson or if they should do more on their own or seek additional instruction

Other Strategies

More strategies

• Homework Before student does homework - teacher explains

what should be learned from the assignment This gives the students what their goal for doing homework is (not just busy work)

After homework is completed - teacher asks students how they would do on an assessment dealing with the homeworkThe student here assesses his knowledge on his ownStudents would then either review what they did or practice more of the same to better understand the subject

Tools for Learning• Teachers should provide students with tools (or

tricks) to help them learn when teaching lessons

• Examples:First letter association technique - acronyms

ex. Order of operations in mathPlease Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

(Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract)

Rhyme Techniques – Make a rhyme to remember a fact

Encourage students to use these techniques when learning new material – this will help them remember longer when information is relative to something else

Self-regulation

For teachers to help students become self-regulated learners teachers need to make the students aware of:

– What the student knows about the subject (use KWL)– What is the goal of the lesson or project– What are the resources available to the student– What is the student’s anxiety level (how does the

student feel about learning or doing this assignment or taking this test)

• Teachers must facilitate the following to encourage the student to be self-regulated– Time required to complete the task

Teacher sets time frame– Plan study time

(teacher could set different mile stones for the assignment to assist the students in this area

– Organize materialsmake software available for the students – outlining, flowcharting, etc.

– What strategies will be used by the studentstudents discuss strategies with partners and/or in groups to make sure they are on track – setup by the teacher

• Teacher needs to help monitor progress and then to help the students reflect on the assignment – What is working – are the students on task– Change strategies if needed – give students

different strategies if students experiencing difficulty with task

– Self test on what is being learned – teacher needs to encourage students to self test their knowledge

Using technology to facilitate metacognition skills

• A graphic organizer for students to use as they are doing a project (KWL)

KWhat I Know

WWhat I Want to Learn

LWhat I Have Learned

Inspiration (software product) • To help students organize thoughts• To do timelines to plan out projects (planning –

students learn to plan)• To compare information

Blogging • Students write what they already know and what

they are learning• Students working together on projects

comparing information

Examples of Metacognition in the Classroom

In these examples a math teacher is teaching Rules of Order to middle school students. I used Bubblebye to add comments to the videos.

The original videos were from http://coe.jmu.edu/Mathvids2/strategies/tms.html

1. Video

2. Video

3. Video