What is meta-cognition?

Thinking about thinking!

Meta-cognitive strategies promote independent learners who are able to monitor and reflect upon their own learning.

By prioritising class time for reflection and deciding upon the next steps we raise the profile of revisiting work and encourage students to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning.

What is meta-cognition?• Meta-cognition can take place during any phase of the lesson and

works best when students are regularly exposed to this way of thinking.

• Meta-cognitive activities will already feature in most of your practice, however it is important to make these explicit to enable students to understand why they are being asked to think in this way.

• By completing meta-cognitive work in purple pen students will be better able to make connections between the skills they are using in different subjects.

How can you use meta-cognition in your classroom?

• Pages 31-36 in the teaching and learning handbook give a variety of ways in which you can build meta-cognitive work into your lessons.

How have we used metacognition in geography?

• As part of our marking• Extension tasks• Starter activities • Plenaries• As part of the learning outcomes

By providing a variety of ways for students to engage with meta-cognition it is more likely that they will begin to independently reflect upon their learning.

Meta-cognition in marking

• This provides a chance for students to reflect on their work in a variety of ways. In geography we have been using many of the meta-cognitive questions to gain in depth responses form our students

Meta-cognition in extension tasks• Adding questions to PPT slides as a way for students to consider how they

have learnt

• Stretch and challenge wall – linked to the magenta principles to encourage students to process information in a different way

Starter activities

• Can be tied into learning outcomes• Can be used to think about the skills needed at the

start of a lesson or unit of work – see Kate Day’s menu on page 33

• Using jot thoughts to enable students to reflect ontheir prior knowledge of atopic.

Plenaries

• A chance for students to reflect on what and how they have learnt during the lesson.

• Geography have developed a reflection book system with the 6th form where they reflect on their learning in depth at least once (usually as a plenary) during the lesson and record it in their assessment book.

Reflecting on your use of metacognition in the classroom?

Kate Day’s checklist on p341. How often do students evaluate what they already know at the

start of a topic?2. Are there opportunities in your lessons for students to talk

about their thinking?3. Do students keep a record of their thinking?4. Do students get to evaluate their work? How is this monitored?Finally…• How will you build metacognition into your schemes of learning

to meet the twice per half term deadline?(remember this does not have to be a massive task!)