Metacognition

In Nancy Chick’s writing, Metacogniton: Thinking about One’s Thinking , she discusses taking a metacognitive approach to learning and the many positive effects it can have on ones learning and their approach to learning. Metacognition is when one consciously thinks about the process used to plan, monitor, and assess understanding and performance. Metacognitive practices increase learning by strengthening the ability to adapt one’s learning in order to comprehend and complete new tasks and content. Students who learn to think using a metacognitive process will have an increased awareness in their strengths and weaknesses as a learner across all areas of learning. Having this awareness of strengths and needs will assist students in developing a plan for their learning considering how they learn best and what needs to be learned.

As I was reading this article I was thinking about the importance of teaching students how to think using a metacognitive process. This type of thinking is important to teach at a young age so that students can use it throughout their education, finding and using the best approaches to learning and processing so that they can excel. The article offered several ways to promote a “classroom culture ground in metacognition” that I would like to use in my classroom. The first recommendation is to promote an environment that encourages students to identify their confusions and ask questions. I teach kindergarten so I feel this comes natural to many of my students so I plan to continue to do this and push them to ask themselves specific questions that will foster metacognitive thinking such as “What was difficult?” or “what did I do to help me solve this problem?”. I will also allow students to turn and talk to share their reflections with a peer to incorporate Chick’s second recommendation of integrating reflection. Her final suggestion is to model metacognitive thinking. This is something my school strongly encourages through our lesson plan template using the I do, we do, you do model. We use this format for all lessons and incorporate this modeling into the first portion of the lesson.