Metacognition means using and manipulating one’s thinking. According to the module, metacognitive knowledge develops over time and is related to higher academic achievement. Metacognitive development can be influenced by biological factors and familial factors such as the relationships and conversations that take place between a child and his parents or siblings. After the metacognitive skills are developed, it is up to the individual to say how those skills are applied to learning.
Metacognition can occur in different ways in the classroom. In a classroom I observed in high school, the teacher engaged students in a “Jigsaw” activity with a book they were reading. After reading a few chapters, the teacher asked the students to complete Jigsaw 1, which was making a prediction about what will happen in the next chapter. This gave the students a chance to reflect on the previous chapters and make an educated guess based on what they've read. Jigsaw 2 was drawing the characters and explaining their role in the story. By identifying characters and their importance, the students were given an opportunity to showcase what they've read and to use their imagination to depict the characters in an image-form. The final Jigsaw was answering reading comprehension questions and picking out the main ideas of the chapters they read. These small assessments are ways for the students to check how they are progressing in reading and where they need to pay attention more or improve. As the students get older, their metacognitive skills will become more developed and they will not have to do these Jigsaw activities to be able to answer simple questions about the story.
In lower-order thinking, thinking and application of information is done on a very basic level. Information is usually looked at, memorized, and recalled, sometimes word-for-word. In higher-order thinking, information is analyzed and synthesized to make it more meaningful and applicable. This will include manipulating given information to analyze something else. High-order thinking is not done on a basic level, but instead is more complex and abstract.
The information in the reading connects with what we have learned in the past because various theories say that development occurs over time and improves as we get older. Metacognition becomes easier to do as a person gets older and as he/she creates more experiences.
In my future classroom, I hope to be able to apply the idea of the “Jigsaw” activity. I feel that doing activities like these will help stimulate the students’ mind and will allow them to focus and think deeper in their material. I could prime them by telling them what to focus on in certain readings and which sections are the most important so that they pay attention to those sections a little more. Students will be analyzing and synthesizing previous information from the book to be able to move forward and answer future questions.
Besides reading and social studies, how can metacognition be applied to math or science?
Metacognition can be applied to math or science in some of the same ways as reading and social studies. Teachers can help students develop strategies that will help them better understand and remember the material. In both math and science, teachers can encourage students to take notes, or even provide them with skeletal notes that outline the main points of the topic. Metacognition also comes into play during studying. Teachers can help students carry out effective strategies for studying, such as spending less time on material that is well known to the student, and more time on material that is somewhat unfamiliar. For science, teachers can even use techniques such as reciprocal teaching or PQ4R to go over what they have recently read, to make sure students understand the material in depth.
ReplyDeleteIn my personal experiences when using metacognition in math and science. I found that the most helpful way to apply this to math for example is to use the teacher's examples of problems when studying. This represents the encoding plus storage method of metacognition. You are writing down the problem, then you are going home and studying the correct way to do the problem before a test.
ReplyDeleteThe jigsaw is definitely good for targeting attention to particular things. It's also good for comparison (another higher order thinking activity) or some analysis, at the experts share at the end, and compare results.
ReplyDelete