Metacognition is simply thinking about your own thinking. It deals with ways to manipulate and control your thinking by using different strategies. Metacognition develops over time, and can be affected by factors such as biological and environmental differences. The theory of mind, which describes how children understand their own thoughts, is an early form of metacogniton. It involves four characteristics- false-beliefs, appearance-reality distinctions, visual perspective-taking, and introspection. These characteristics start around preschool and become more refined as the child ages. It is important to keep these characteristics in mind while teaching children, because they affect students' learning and development. Teachers should help and encourage students to practice strategies that help them with their own metacognition, including note taking and reciprocal teaching, in which students and teachers discuss parts of a text in a structured conversation.
Should teachers be teaching their students about metacognition and ways to manipulate their thinking in every grade, including kindergarten? Would teachers simply say "What do you think about that?", or could they use a more complex teachnique?
Lower order deals thinking focuses on memorizing and recalling information, or applying something that you've already learned. Higher order thinking involves manipulating, evaluating, and analyzing information. Lower order thinking does not involve as much metacognition as higher order thinking does. For example, a four-year-old may be able to recite his home address, even though he may not be aware of his own thinking. This is because he has been taught the information and has memorized it, and simply has to recall it, which becomes almost automatic.
The information in the module connects to what we have been learning about development. Development occurs over time, becoming more refined as one gets older. This is also true of metacognition. Both development and metacognition are also affected by factors such as biology, environment, and culture.
I can facilitate metacognition in my future classroom by helping students understand what information is important for them to know and study. One was is to encourage them to take notes in class. I can provide them with skeletal notes that highlight the main points of a topic, while giving students room to write their own notes as well. I can also teach students how to make and take matrix notes, which organize information in a way that makes it much easier to understand and remember. During teaching, I can also verbally notify students when I say something that I want them to write down and remember. Through these techniques, I would hope to improve students' metacognition.
Katie's question of "What do you think about that" was exactly what I was thinking about when teachers ask you this question. Does this simple question really help students to be able to expand their minds? I think it opens up the mind to be ready to learn, and defiantly starts the flow of knowledge, but I am unsure like Katie asked if it is the best move to be able to understand thinking about thinking. I think that when a teacher asks a student that, the student feels pressure to have an idea quickly, and not time to process what one really thinks about it. Thinking about the information takes time, and includes processing, physically and emotionally. I think teachers should work on asking this question in a different way to be able to get those feelings, and those ideas when they are looking for thinking thoughts. Maybe a teacher could change the way they say this and ask instead, "When you are learning this, is a connection made to the information" and than that connection can aid in hearing what one is thinking about.
ReplyDeleteI think a great way for teachers to help their students utilize metacognition more often is to encourage them to think about WHY they gave a specific answer. Teachers can also say things like "now when you're doing the assignment, make sure you pay attention to..." so that the students will be metacognitive thinkers while they are doing that assignment because they will be thinking about their own thoughts during the assignment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Carly and Ashley. I also think that it is extremely important for teachers to teach their students different ways to study and how to effectively do so. This is because I never was taught how to take good notes in school. Because of this, once I got to college and had to take notes without the help of a powerpoint or outline, I had no idea what was most important to write down. Again, I think it is important for teachers to also not only teach how to take good notes but where the provided notes come from and why they were chosen. Kids need to begin to learn how to pick out the most important ideas for themselves eventually. I also think that teaching time management is important. This would be a very helpful think for students to know when it comes to be "crunch time" and everyone is trying to study for multiple tests at a time (depending on what age they are).
ReplyDeleteFor younger students, the simple question of "What do you think about that?" is a perfect way to start using metacognition. While it isn't an extremely difficult question, it is just enough for the younger students who are new to metacognition to think about it on a small scale. As the students grow and develop, they will understand metacognition more. When this happens, teachers can start to ask more difficult questions to guide their thinking.
ReplyDeleteI like your examples here. While, the "What do you think?" question is kind of well known, it's definitely not the best or only way to bring in metacognition. The culture and expectations of the classroom come in a bit here. You can imagine that most 1st graders wouldn't be walking around talking about how they feel at the moment, or what they're thinking, out loud, and be encouraged to do so! If you encourage (during appropriate times) that the kids talk about their own thinking (thinking out loud), it would definitely make them aware of it, and continue the practice in the future.
ReplyDeleteAlso, modeling good reading strategies (like the video in class--on the powerpoint) of how the teacher modeled good reading to the class--making inferences, etc. You can also teach them questions to ask themselves while reading or while writing. Self questioning is a bit metacognition practice, so just getting them to ask the right questions as the right times would be a great practice to start. (Checking their math, reading, writing, listening to a historical story, figuring out a science problem....) Remember, these are skills they can take with them through high school! (And some students that age dont' have these skills)