5 simple ways to encourage meta-cognition

It is important that supporting pupils’ metacognition and self-regulation skills isn’t seen as something ‘extra’ for teachers to do, but an effective pedagogy that can be used to support their normal classroom practice.

EEF 2018

1. Why this is wrong

If in class questioning/discussion, you can ask the student themselves why their answer is wrong or ask another student to explain why. If in written work use WTIW (Why This Is Wrong -I just made that up) and get students to write a brief explanation to show they’ve understood the error.

At GCSE our students write their own multiple choice questions. This is always a good time to identify misconceptions if they credit an incorrect answer. WTIW is a quick way for them to correct their work and learn from their error. They won’t learn from a ’X’ on their work.

2. Use a visualiser*

There are lots of ways it can be used but using it alongside your own live commentary whilst ‘being a student (guided practice)’ is very useful.

I put a GCSE question on it, and unpick and annotate ready for answering the question. What does this word mean? What quotation could I use? What core knowledge/teaching can I reference?

They don’t even need to answer the question. Practising the thought process and annotation is powerful by itself.

* other methods are just as effective: interactive whiteboard, annotation on whiteboard, overhead projector…

3. Why did we do this?

A simple strategy to get students thinking about the value of an activity; ask them why you got them to do it. If there isn’t an answer that links to learning then you may want to rethink the activity.

4. This is a good one (or WAGOLL if you want another acronym)

Modelling a good version of the outcome you want from students gives them something to visualise. A worked example or a sample answer does the job. Discuss why it’s good. Annotate and highlight the important parts.

One way I do this is to write a ‘perfect’ answer on a slide and for the following slides copy the same answer then take one element away from it each slide . I get students to identify which part is missing each time. A kind of spot the difference that allows them to identify all the aspects that make it a great paragraph.

5. What do you need to focus on?

None of the nonsense of walking into a classroom asking students what their target is or what they need to do to get to the next level. If teachers are explicit in what students need to be able to do in the specific skill or topic they’re studying they should also know what they need to improve on which cannot be answered in a simple sentence to the stranger coming in the lesson.

Students won’t know what they need to do better by osmosis; give them the criteria of what makes a good one and then use their own work to identify what needs improving. Teacher feedback should use the same language. Ambiguous phrases like ‘add more detail’ and ‘revise more’ are not acceptable.

A simple way I do this is to feedback on a piece of work with one or two things they need to do to improve. In their next piece of work they write these on a sticker (could easily be written at the top of the work) and then they must ensure that they complete these things in the new piece of work. They can colour code them and then highlight in their work where they’ve addressed them. Repeat with the same targets in the next few pieces of work. Just because they’ve done it once does not mean they’ve nailed it.