There are many things that my cooperating teacher is doing to help his students develop metacognition, so that they can become more self-regulated learners.
The first thing that I noticed in his classroom was a section of the board dedicated to projects and assignments. It was labeled with these phrases: Due Today, Due Soon and Due Later. Under each of these categories, the teacher had things written to help the students with planning. Soon after starting the class, the teacher moved to this section of the board and reviewed what they needed to be working on. By doing this, he was helping the students to monitor their progress. The assignment that was due that day, was a food log. After they turned it in, he asked the students how they felt about it and if it was as easy as they thought it would be. He also asked what they learned about their own eating habits by doing this assignment and compared it to what they had learned about having a balanced diet.This conversation with the class helped the students to evaluate their own understanding of what they learned and how well they did.
While the students were coming into the classroom at the beginning of the period, they started working on the journal prompt. The journal prompt said, "What do I need to do to be able to start/finish my meal plan? Write 1-2 goals for this assignment." The teacher brought up this journal prompt while talking about the assignments. By asking the students to write goals about the upcoming assignment, he was helping students to develop their metacognitive knowledge. Their goals could easily be about declarative, procedural or conditional knowledge. I do think it would have been helpful for him to ask more specifically about each type, but he could have discussed these things on a day where I wasn't observing. By having students write about their progress and set goals, he was helping students to become more regulated learners. His students were being given the opportunity to analyze the assignment, set goals, monitor their progress and possibly reevaluating their goals, and evaluation their success.
An article on Edutopia says, "When teachers cultivate students' abilities to reflect on, monitor, and evaluate their learning strategies, young people become more self-reliant, flexible and productive. Students improve their capacity to weigh choices and evaluate options, particularly when the answers are not obvious." I think it is safe to say that most teachers want to help their students to be successful as they more toward becoming adults. It seems that teaching metacognitive skills is a great way to accomplish that. I think that this is a wonderful way to support ALL our students during their adolescence.
