Reflect
This week’s Wednesday Wisdom comes from teacher and metacognition expert Nathan Burns. “What did you do at school today?” It’s a question many of us ask our children almost daily, and we quickly get used to unsatisfactory answers! It’s not that what they had for lunch or who they played with at break isn’t interesting, but most parents are desperate to know more about the actual learning their children have been doing.
Those vague answers also don’t help the anxiety that many parents feel about what progress their children are making. It’s not just a question of whether they’re learning, but how much and how quickly. I know that I worry a huge amount about the academic progress of my 3 year old. Why can’t she count past 20? Why can she not write her name legibly? Should I be concerned? Probably not. But we all worry, whether it is rational or not.
It gets even harder once children are older and the type of knowledge they are expected to learn becomes more complex and specialist. Not too many parents could confidently support GCSE Maths or History without some serious revision of their own.
However, there is a way to make talking about learning much more productive and helpful, to boost children’s progress, and to help bridge the gap between parents and school work. This is my specialist area: metacognition. An easy way to think about it is learning about learning. It’s a widely known area of theory, but not widely understood. I ‘discovered’ it during my initial teacher training and it excited me straight away. Metacognition refers to any approach or activity where students are reflecting on their own learning approaches as well as studying the material at hand. You can increasingly see it at work in the classroom, where the science of learning is making more inroads. And it’s an approach we can foster at home.
So actually, it turns out that parents are right to ask their children all about school!
Metacognition gives us a way of talking about, and intervening with, children’s learning in ways that make it more effective and turn them into resilient, independent learners. It also allows parents a way of interacting with their children’s schoolwork that doesn’t require them to be experts in what is being taught. Few parents could achieve a high grade in many GCSE subjects without revising material from their own school days! But we can help children to articulate their own learning process as a way to build their confidence and ability to do well.
Metacognition lifts the lid on our own thinking. It happens when we help children to think about their own learning and how to learn more effectively. You’ve probably heard about the importance of developing a “growth mindset” with children: a belief that they can overcome obstacles and get better even at things they find difficult. This is an example of what metacognition is. Metacognition helps to develop “self-regulated” learners who are active participants in their own learning and who reflect on the strategies they use. They are better at organising and managing their own time.
Motivate
Education so often feels like a game of marginal gains. Little things that we can do in school or at home to gain an extra mark here, an extra mark there. If you’ve had a child go through any exams then you’ll know the feeling, and it’s very familiar to teachers too!
But metacognition is perhaps the final major gain. The Education Endowment Foundation – the leading body for assessing the effectiveness of education initiatives – have declared that metacognition is more powerful than any other teaching practice that we can develop. It can, if done well, lead to a 7 month increase in attainment: almost a whole school year. The benefits of metacognition work for all students, regardless of their demographics, prior attainment, or socio-economic backgrounds.
Metacognition makes learning more efficient and more effective by empowering children to understand and take charge of what they’re doing and how they’re progressing. Metacognition develops more independent learners who have strategies for acquiring new skills in an effective way. It helps to develop self-regulation skills and resilience in the face of challenging tasks. Students trained to learn this way revise more effectively, because they know to concentrate on the right things, not just the easy things.
The great news is that, just as I train teachers in effective ways to bring metacognition into the classroom, it’s easy to start using it at home. In fact, supporting the development of metacognitive abilities at home could be just as powerful as supporting them in school.
Support
These are some easy ways to bring in metacognition and talk about learning at home, in ways that support the work children are doing at school.
A great place to start is by talking with children about their learning. This can begin from a young age. Experts in metacognition talk about planning, monitoring and evaluation. What do they want to do, how are they getting on with it, and how did it go? If something is hard, what might make it easier? Are we happy with the job we’ve done, and is there a way we could make it go better next time?
Talk about school. Move beyond general questions and encourage children to talk about what they learnt and how. What were the sticking points in the day and how did they overcome them? What sort of help did they need and did they know how to ask for it?
Justify their choices. Imagine your child has a piece of descriptive writing to do for homework. Encourage them to talk about the choices they’re making. Why did they choose a particular word? Why did they start a new line? When they read back through their introduction how could it be better?
Find connections. Our mental schema of a topic is the way that our knowledge fits together. We can strengthen them by finding connections between the information we know. Think of a vocabulary word they’ve learnt. How well does it apply to a character in a book? What about a figure from history?
Key word quizzing. Before children begin a task, ask them about the key terms in the instructions. If children think carefully about what is being asked of them before they begin, they’re likely to produce better work and plan more effectively.
You can learn more about Nathan's work, and his books on applying metacognition, at his website.
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Let’s start with the science! This webinar with Professor Michael Thomas and Dr Simon Green explores how our understanding of brain science can be practically applied in our everyday parenting. In this podcast with Dr Shana Carpenter of Oregon State University, explore the optimal types of study and revision that take advantage of the science of the brain: perfect for families coming into exam years.
To learn more about a practical approach to metacognition, a great place to start is this webinar with Science teacher and advisor Liz Keable, full of strategies to use at home to get children thinking about their learning. Follow that by listening to teacher and author Patrice Bain, author of A Parent’s Guide To Powerful Teaching. To bring children more into the process, try this activity on Challenge Levels for Learning. You can use these tips for asking effective questions at home.