Metacognition/Critical Thinking Blog Post 1

Metacognition is how a person thinks about their own personal thinking processes. There are three categories in which metacognition exists; person knowledge, task knowledge, and strategy knowledge. Person knowledge is about a person's own capabilities. Task knowledge is about the person's personal judgment of the difficulty of a task. Strategy knowledge is about a person's ability to use a specific strategy to learn information.  Critical thinking is defined as the procedure of assessing the precision and worth of information and reasoning methods. Higher –order and lower-order thinking skills are cognitive based processes. Critical thinking is determined as a higher-order thinking skill. For a practicing teacher I would recommend using effective questioning in the classroom. This strategy stimulates critical thinking and promotes class discussion.

In the metacognition module it discusses introspection it discusses that by age 5 a child is likely to overestimate and underestimate the amount of thinking they are capable of. How does this affect learning and evaluation of Kindergarteners? 

The distinction between lower order and higher order types of thinking is that higher order thinking is thought of as thinking used in order to do something productive and lower order thinking is thought of as thinking that is based on a person’s already known thoughts and ideas.

When discussing The Theory of Mind in Childhood in the metacognition module there is a connection made relating to Piaget's Theory of Development. There are different steps in this theory that can only be reached once a child reaches a certain age. Piaget's theory was based on this idea as well. He believed that a child cannot move up to a new level of development until the biological age of the child matches the minimum age of the level. This is shown in the theory of mind in childhood. For example, in the appearance-reality distinctions the text states," children are not capable of understanding that appearances can be deceiving or false until they reach age 4 or 5."

I might facilitate the idea of metacognition in my classroom by using my knowledge of metacognitive regulation. Metacognitive regulation requires the use of three mental processes; planning, monitoring, and evaluating. In an elementary special education classroom I could use this specific strategy to plan a lesson that that involves a lot of hands on activities to keep every student engaged and to prevent boredom that would disrupt the whole class. I would also monitor the class to make sure that my plan is working efficiently and that learning is taking place, instead of disruption. I would also evaluate my plan by reviewing and grading the outcome of the activities.