Responsible Student Learning
Module Three

Dona Cruikshank - Course Designer
E-Mail:dona@ontarioeast.net

Please respond to the following questions:

1. What is your overall reaction to how the problem solving activity was received by the students?
2. What was the most positive aspect of the problem solving activity in terms of your perception of student learning?
3. What would you do differently if you repeated the same problem solving activity?

Also, please include any additional comments.

Metacognition
Tell me - I forget;
Show me - I remember
Involve me - I understand!

Introduction

In a Learner-Centered classroom, students are involved in all aspects of the learning process. With the increased expectation that they have responsibilities for their own learning, students soon understand that they can achieve more than they were ready to accept in a learning environment where they were passive participants.
It is not good enough to have students become involved in guiding their own learnings, if we don’t give them the necessary tools and strategies. Problem-solving, as was discussed in Module 2 of this Course, is one of those tools that students require. A good process can be used for simple decision-making or longer design projects and in any subject area. Another tool that enhances problem-solving and really lets students take charge of their own learning is Metacognition. Metacognition or “thinking about thinking” teaches students to understand how they learn and also when used as a reflective practice, greatly increases the retention of material covered.

As participants in this Internet course, you use metacognitive strategies monthly as you reflect on the learning that took place in your Module activities. Now, you will learn how to use this powerful tool to increase your students’ growth as responsible learners.

Module Reading

Metacognitive strategies are essential for our new millennium. They will help your students develop skills to cope with new situations and foster the higher level thinking that will be so important in this every-changing world. Content may become obsolete but thinking learners will not.

Teachers already use metacognitive strategies; however, we must be consciously aware of them and model them for our students. Problem-solving and research activities in all subjects provide opportunities for developing metacognitive strategies. When working with these activities, we need to focus student attention on how tasks are accomplished and develop process goals, in addition to content goals, that are evaluated with students to discover that “thinking about thinking” improves learning.

When teachers are aware of and use strategies that promote metacogition, students have more opportunity to reflect on their own thought processes. As they think through a problem, make decisions, or attempt to understand a situation or text, they become adept at monitoring, assessing, and improving their own thinking.

Learners who are well developed metacognitively:

Are confident that they can learn.
Make accurate assessments of why they succeed in learning.
Think clearly about inaccuracies when failure occurs during tasks.
Actively seek to expand their repertoire of strategies for learning.
Match strategies to the learning task, making adjustments when necessary.
Ask for guidance from peers or the teacher.
Take time to think about their own thinking.
View themselves as continual learners and thinkers

(NCREL Pathways Critical Issue, Metagcogntion)

What Some Researchers Say About Metacogition

Blakey and Spence (1990) describe techniques that facilitate metacognition, or "thinking about thinking." Citing the educational value of student-owned learning, the authors suggest that thinking about one's own behavior is the first step towards directing that behavior and learning how to learn. The strategies they discuss as a means to developing metacognition include: "identifying 'what you know' and 'what you don't know'"; "talking about thinking"; "keeping a journal"; "planning and self-regulation"; "debriefing the thinking process"; and "self-evaluation."

Metacognition is thinking about thinking, knowing "what we know" and "what we don't know. Just as an executive's job is management of an organization, a thinker's job is management of thinking. The basic metacognitive strategies are:

1. Connecting new information to former knowledge.

2. Selecting thinking strategies deliberately.

3. Planning, monitoring, and evaluating thinking processes. (Dirkes, 1985)

Studies show that increases in learning have followed direct instruction in metacognitive strategies. These results suggest that direct teaching of these thinking strategies may be useful, and that independent use develops gradually (Scruggs, 1985).

The Three Basic Elements of Metacognition

(Thinking Strategies)

Develop a plan of action

Maintain/monitor the plan

Evaluate the plan

Before - When you are developing the plan of action, ask yourself:

What in my prior knowledge will help me with this particular task?
In what direction do I want my thinking to take me?
What should I do first?
Why am I reading this selection?
How much time do I have to complete the task?

During - When you are maintaining/monitoring the plan of action, ask yourself:

How am I doing?
Am I on the right track?
How should I proceed?
What information is important to remember?
Should I move in a different direction?
Should I adjust the pace depending on the difficulty?
What do I need to do if I do not understand?

After - When you are evaluating the plan of action ask yourself:

How well did I do?
Did my particular course of thinking produce more or less than I had expected?
What could I have done differently?
How might I apply this line of thinking to other problems?
Do I need to go back through the task to fill in any "blanks" in my understanding?

Excerpted from Strategic Teaching and Reading Project Guidebook. (1995, NCREL, rev. ed.)

A Closing Comment on the Importance of Metacognitive Strategies
(with excerpts from, and summarizing of the article, “Good Teaching Matters....a Lot”, Malkin Dare, Professionally Speaking, The Magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers, June 2000)

“Recent research from Tennessee, Texas, Massachusetts and Alabama has revealed that quality of instruction makes a big difference to how much students learn. ...Furthermore, the effects of a good (or poor) teacher are long-lasting, affecting student achievement for at least two more years....There are positive examples of raising teacher effectiveness from other countries as well. One approach to improving teaching, used by Japanese teachers, is described in a new book entitled The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas for the World’s Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom, by James W. Stigler and James Hiebert, published by the Free Press.”

Briefly what the article goes on to describe is a teaching methodology used in Japanese classrooms that encourages problem-solving and metacognitive strategies. Almost all of the Japanese lessons begin with a rich problem that the students are challenged to solve during the course of the lesson. The students, sometimes in teams, sometimes with partners, sometimes working alone, are encouraged to explain to the class how they tackled the problem. The teacher asks for many solutions and strategies, accepting both correct ones and incorrect ones, and works through them with the students showing why some are correct and some are not. The use of many responses to attacking the problem allows for a wide range of learning styles and ability levels to be addressed. Students are continually reflecting on their learning and the approaches they used to solve their problem, as well as seeing options that they might utilize in future situations.

Your Module 3 Activity

This topic suggests so many possible activities that it may be difficult for participants to limit their work to one. Several possible approaches are listed below. Please select the one(s) that you feel fit(s) into your level of expertise and your students’ needs.

Activity A. Strategies for Developing Metacognitive Behaviors (A process for all grade levels)

1. Identify "what you know" and "what you don't know."

Before students begin a new activity or unit of work, have them think about and decide what they already know and what they need to learn. Use starters such as: “What I already know about...” and “What I want/need to learn about....”. As they progress through the activity, they need to update or expand this information based on their new learnings.

2. Talk about thinking.

Model and discuss how you, as the teacher, work through planning and problem-solving situations in order to develop the vocabulary that your students need for thinking and talking about their own thinking. This will help your students be able to talk about their learning and recognize when others are using a thinking process.

Try paired problem-solving where one student talks through a problem, describing his/her thinking processes. The partner listens and asks questions to help clarify thinking. Similarly, in reciprocal teaching (Palinscar, Ogle, Jones, Carr, & Ransom, 1986), small groups of students can take turns playing teacher, asking questions, and clarifying and summarizing the material being studied.

3. Keep a thinking journal.

Use journals or learning logs in which students reflect upon their thinking, make note of things that do or do not make sense to them, and comment on how they have dealt with difficulties. The journal will show over a period of time how your students process their learning.

For younger students, provide sentence starters to assist with patterns for reflection:

I didn’t know that........
I wonder........
Next time, I will....

4. Plan and self-regulate

To assume more responsibility for planning and managing their learning, teach your students to make plans for learning activities : how long will an activity take, what materials will they need and where will they get them, who will they work with, where will they go for information, etc. If you are familiar with rubrics, with your students develop the criteria and descriptions for evaluation of their activity, so they learn to think and ask questions of themselves as they proceed through a learning activity.

5. Debriefing the thinking process.

This is a critical step for retention and one that can be too easily skipped because of time constraints.

Use these activities to focus student discussion on their thinking processes to develop an awareness of strategies that were successful, and those that can be applied to other learning situations.

1. Guide your students to review the activity, gathering data on the thinking processes they used and their feelings about their learning.

2. As a group, students classify related ideas, identifying thinking strategies used..

3.As a group, evaluate their successes looking at what worked, what didn’t and what might work next time in a similar situation, and in a different situation.

6. Self-Evaluation.

Have your students use their journals and/or checklists focusing on thinking processes as ways to evaluate themselves on their learning in the activity. Ask students if they can recognize how learning activities in different disciplines are similar so that they will begin to transfer learning strategies to new situations.

*This process is summarized from ERIC Digest, ED327218, Blakey, Elaine - Spence, Sheila (1990)

Activity B: Thinking Through A Problem-Solving Process

It’s often not enough for students just to do something well. They also need to be able to explain and evaluate how they did it, so they can transfer the skills to future situations and other settings.

Give your students a problem-solving activity to solve, or use an activity from Module 2.

Have each student describe the steps they went through to solve the problem. A flowchart might be helpful for this step.

Have students critique each step describing what they did, what happened, what was hard, what was easy.

Have students describe how they would improve the process for the next time.

Activity C. Other Metacognitive Checklists and Forms

Adapt and use any of the following to enhance one of the activities above or as a stand-alone reflection. Use some of these forms with your own planning, thinking and reflection.

1. Reflections

Class/Course:______________________________________ Date:______________

Circle one: --- Lecture --- Discussion --- Video --- Written Material

1. Key ideas:

2. Questions I have:

3. Connections I can make with other classes in my program or in my learning in general

4. How I can apply these ideas to my work and/or my life outside school:

5. My insights or reflections from these ideas:

2. Self-Assessment

Class/Course:____________________________ Date:____________________

Assignment:_________________________________________________________

1. What was I supposed to do?

2. What was my favorite part? Why?

3. What was my least favorite part? Why?

4. If I did this task over, what would I do differently? Why?

5. What grade do I deserve on this assignment? Why?

6. What new goal can I set for myself?

3. Metacognitive Interview Form (to encourage thinking while reading)
Give students a reading selection that they can read without difficulty. Tell them that you want them to show you how to read the passage.

Questions:
What should I do first? Should I do anything before I start to read? Show me how to do that.

What should I do while I am reading? Show me how to do that.

What should I do if I am having trouble understanding what I am reading? Show me how to do that.

What should I do when I finish reading?

Do I need to do anything else to really understand what I read?

(For actual student examples using this form, check out http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1metin.htm)

4. Ticket out the Door
Three things I learned today....
One question I have......
One thing I’d like to go over again.....

5. Review
Three things I remember from our last class....
Two questions I still have ....
One area I’m unsure of .....

6. Getting Ready for A Test
Things I Know So Well I Could Teach Them to Someone Else
Things I Don’t Get at All
Things I’d like Reviewed Before the Test
Things I Plan to Do Before the Test

7. Student Self-Assessment/Conference Form ____ Teacher / Parent Version
What I Do Well ________________________________What You Do Well
What I Want to Learn More about ___________________ How I Can Help You
What I Need to Improve ______________________Steps I will Take to Help You Improve
Steps I Will Take to Improve

8. Good Resources for Additional Reading:

Self-Talk for Teachers and Students: Metacognitive Strategies for Personal and Classroom Use, Brenda H. Manning, Beverly D. Payne, both of University of Georgia, Prentice- Hall. The reflective approaches to teaching presented in this text can improve the quality of teachers' and students' lives--both in and outside of the classroom. Many authentic teacher examples are sprinkled throughout the book, lending a needed air of credibility that prospective and practicing teachers crave.

Using Embedded Questions To Jump-Start Metagcognition in Middle School Readers, Weir, Carole, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Mar98, Vol. 41, Issue 6, p.458

Websites on Reading and Metacognition
An excellent and practical article which relates the efforts of the author in implementing the concept of metacognition among middle-school students.

Just a few of many:

http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/Metacog.htm
Metacognition: An Overview
Jennifer A. Livingston: A good article about the various aspects of metacognition. Several examples of metacognitive behaviour.

http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed376427.html
Metacognition and Reading To Learn. ERIC Digest.
Definitions and implications on reading. The effect of knowledge about text structure, task demands, and strategies on comprehension in reading

Additional Resources

provided by: Tara A. Demers - "4" Project

Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. G. (1993). Considering the possibilities. In search of understanding: The case for constructivist classrooms (15-22). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

McCaslin, M., & Good, T. L. (1993). Classroom management and motivated student learning. In Tomlinson, T. M., Motivating students to learn: Overcoming barriers to high achievement (pp. 245-261). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.

Treffinger, D. (1978). Guidelines for encouraging independence and self-direction among gifted students. Journal of Creative Behavior, 12(1), 14-20.

Understanding Learning Styles / Multiple Intelligences

Gardner, H. (1997). Reflections on multiple intelligences: Myths and messages. Phi Delta Kappan, 78(5), 200-207.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). What is a differentiated classroom?. The Differentiated Classroom (pp. 1-8). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). Elements of differentiation. The Differentiated Classroom (pp. 9-16). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). Rethinking how we do school-and for whom. The Differentiated Classroom (pp. 17-24). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). Learning environments that support differentiated instruction. The Differentiated Classroom (pp. 25-35). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wolffe, R., Robinson, H., & Grant, J. M. (1998). Creating multiple procedures from multiple intelligences. Catalyst for Change, 28(1), 15-16.

Responsible Student Learning Module Three

Responsible Student Learning
Module Three