Empowering learners with metacognition
One of the best ways to support children with learning is to nurture their metacognition skills. The term metacognition refers to the process of thinking about thinking and is used by all excellent learners intuitively. Metacognition involves assessing the task ahead of you, planning your approach, applying strategies and then reviewing how it went. It sounds really simple and the beauty of it is – it is!
Although simple, the power of metacognition cannot be underestimated. Without it the learning process can be much, much trickier. For children and young people who struggle with ‘executive functions’ such as planning, organising and completing tasks, it is even more important to support them to develop metacognitive skills. In fact metacognition is something that can be taught and honed for learners at all levels! With strong metacognitive skills any learning task can be approached with confidence.
The Education Endowment Foundation rates the teaching of metacognition as ‘high impact low cost’ for improving the attainment of disadvantaged learners and older pupils. What is also fantastic is it involves embracing mistakes which we really need to do more. I also know of a school who have a no-marking policy – embedding metacognitive strategies instead. So how can you use it to support learners? Here are some instantly actionable suggestions:
Reveal the thought processes of an expert learner – you! Model metacognition yourself by thinking out loud, “have I done this before? How did I do it? What strategy did I use? How did it go? I remember it went a bit wrong last time so I’m going to try this today…”. We often underestimate the power of modelling!
Before they start a learning task ask your child or young person to reflect on these questions with you. At the end of a task have another conversation, “How did it go? What worked well? What would you change to make it even better next time? Did you make any fantastic mistakes?”. Metacognitive conversations are powerful and effective! They help learners to engage and play around with metacognition and what it means. When I first introduced the idea of metacognition to my daughter she was fascinated, “Eh? How do you think about thinking?!! Can you really do that mum?!!” – Gold!
Have a check sheet as a prompt for learners who require more structure. With practice the aim is that they use the check sheet independently! For learners who are at an early stage of development or who may need lots of support, make sure to keep it easy by reducing the number of questions; start with just one, “Have you done this or something like this before?” and build up the questions slowly as they are mastered bit by bit.
Mix it up by getting your learners to each pick a metacognitive question out of a hat and sharing them with each other – see ideas for questions below!
For anyone interested in exploring this in more detail I would highly recommend reading the Education Endowment Foundation booklet ‘Metacognition and Self Regulation’. It’s available for free at http://www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk.
Best wishes, Kasia