Metacognition TIPR

Metacognition: How is your cooperating teacher helping students develop metacognition and become more self-regulated learners? Include information about the type(s) of metacognitive knowledge being developed and address the metacognitive skills and/or the cycle of self-regulated learning. Be sure to underline the concept's vocabulary in your response. (Use your study guide as you go!)

I've been observing in a high school history classroom. Some of the class periods are for concurrent enrollment students receiving college history credits for HIST1700 through UVU. The other class periods are mostly seniors taking U.S. Government. The teacher specifically talked to me about the difficulties that her concurrent enrollment (CE) students are having in regards to taking accountability for their own learning. Most of them seem to be waiting for her to drop the answers in their laps. The higher level thinking skills seem to be really out of reach for some of them. So this teacher has really focused on helping them understand some methods for reading comprehension preparing for the writing assignments and tests. This would fall under procedural metacognitive knowledge. She's teaching them different strategies to help with reading comprehension and retention. 

For example, I saw her walk through the students' upcoming reading assignment with them. First, she passed out a list of prompts or questions that the students needed to come prepared to discuss. That way they have some help knowing what they're supposed to be reading for. They talked about each of the headers and identified words that might indicate what is important from that section. They read through a timeline at the end of the chapter and read the summary and sample questions. She was trying to give them a broad, big picture idea of what they were going to be learning about in hopes that it would help direct their learning. 

I also saw her helping with the self-regulation cycle, also called co-regulation. After she had gone over some strategies for helping to improve their reading, she reminded them to allow enough time to study and take-in the reading. She really emphasized that textbook reading needs to take more time than reading your favorite novel. She also pointed them to some YouTube videos that reviewed the previous lessons in case they felt they had forgotten the context. I thought that was probably really helpful. I know I sometimes earn better when I review things after the chapter/test is over. That helped them reflect on whether or not their previous knowledge was enough to understand this next chapter that they were about to be assigned. These particular steps fall under the analyze the task and set a goal/plan portion of the cycle. 

I think my favorite thing that she did was have her students evaluate themselves after they took a unit test. I wasn't there for this, but I did help her grade some tests and she told me about it. For each formal assessment, she asks them to evaluate their work. She asks them what grade they think they'll receive, how much effort they put into studying and preparation, what they wish they had done differently, what didn't work, and what they're happy with. She said it puts accountability on them to take charge of their own learning. Did they study enough to get the A that they want? Or did they not put in the time? Did they put in the time, but realize that their methods weren't effective? And it gives them a chance to decide how they'd do it differently in the future.  But, I also liked the part where she asked them what they did well or what they were proud of. Evaluations need to focus on what DID work out, too! (I think that's easy to forget.) This falls under the self-regulation skill of evaluation.  

I think one thing that this teacher could address specifically is the metacognition and its definition, and why it's important. I think that would give the students a foundation to help them connect the dots between these skills that she's teaching them. Also, helping the students with declarative knowledge about their own learning preferences would be helpful.