Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Metacognition Blog Post 1
In the chapter it talked about metacognition and talks about how it changes for certain children. It talks about the different types of metacognition and how planning, monitoring, and evaluation all go into metacognition. My question is there a certain way for a child to stop learning in that specific type of metacognition (i.e. false-beliefs, appearance-reality distinctions, introspection, etc.)? Metacognition in a first grade classroom would be having different books from different perspectives allowing them to see how other people think differently. Or allowing students to switch seats for a day, in a very simplified method, and allowing kids to see how everyone in the room is a different person and everyone has different views of not only the class but the world. You could also have students describe a certain scenario that takes on a certain amount of thinking such as thinking about the layout of their house and where a certain object could be located within that house. Higher and lower thinking are different because higher thinking is the integration of past knowledge into life experiences while lower thinking is just day to day movements such as the repetition of certain already known things. This reading just adds on to what we already know about development and how certain things can be myleinated. It goes along with the higher order thinking showing that if you integrate things into your life and then continuously repeat it; it could be both higher and lower and cause development to occur.
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I really like your suggestions that involve perspective taking! They're very simple and physical examples that would, likely, be effective in getting to students to think about others' thinking.
ReplyDeleteFor your question, most of the research shows that some of these things (not being able to think about false beliefs) are just things very young children CAN'T do up to a certain age (it appears to be about 3 or 4). It's most likely based in biological maturation in some way, so in that sense, no, you wouldn't be able to PUSH it through some method before children are about 3. However, children who are 4 might be CAPABLE of it, but are never given opportunities to think about false beliefs. It's for these kids that it's especially important to do the activities you suggest, or read stories about others' thinkng, so that they can practice the skill.