Metacognition at Chrishall
What is metacognition at Chrishall?
'thinking about thinking'
It is the knowledge and understanding of what we know and how we think, including the ability to regulate our thinking as we work on a task.
Why is metacognition important?
Research has shown that metacognition ...
- Shapes children to become active learners rather than passive learners.
- Gives children ownership, control and greater motivation over their learning.
- Enables children to become aware of the learning process and how they learn.
- Helps to promote thinking and deeper learning/mastery skills.
How we encourage metacognition
To support our children in becoming more meta, questions we ask are:
- Open-ended - We give children space to reflect on their thinking. 'Can you tell me more about why you think that?'
- Non-blaming - It can be hard to stay open when children are acting out, but asking them to think about their behaviour can help them to learn about different situations in a better way: 'Why do you think you got so upset when that happened?'
- Solution focused - We encourage children to think about how they can use their understanding to change things in the future: 'How could you handle that differently next time?'
- Process-orientated - We ask questions that will help children to get a better idea of how their thought processes work: 'How will you know when you have finished?'
Metacognition in the classroom
The 'Meta Walk' is used throughout everyday teaching. A four-stage process: 'Me', 'Plan', 'Do' and 'Review' is consistently used throughout the school to support children in developing and using metacognitive skills.
We want our children to be able to do the following things:
- Explain what a good learner does.
- Explain how they learn best.
- Explain what they find difficult in lessons.
- Start tasks on their own.
- Be able to plan how they will approach a task
- Have the strategies to self-check during tasks.
- Be able to evaluate their progress towards a goal.
- Explain how they feel about working on their own.
Meet our 'Think Aloud' Characters
To support children's engagement and comprehension with metacognition, we use Chris Quigley's 'Think Aloud' characters. They serve as relatable guides for different 'Think Aloud' key strategies that we use, and offer an intuitive and memorable way for children to connect with metacognitive processes.
