1. Developing Metacognitive
Skills in Your Students
By Jane Sutton

2. Strategies for Teachers
• Model the thought process while teaching the subject
matter
This will show the students the process that you are
using when thinking
• Verbalize what are you as a teacher is thinking while you
are explaining the ideas to the students
This reinforces for the students the thinking skills the
students should also be using
• Say it out loud to model what the students should be
doing to think about a problem
Again this will model to the students the thought process
involved and what they should also do

3. More Strategies
• Teachers should help students to connect the new
information to what the students already know
• How?
– Do this in beginning of a lesson
– Link what is being taught to what students already
know
– Teacher should identify what students will be learning
– Teachers should explain why it is meaningful or
important what the students will be learning by giving
relative examples

4. • Before a class the teacher can briefly describe
what will be taught
This will help the students to know what to
expect in the lesson
• At end of class students can write down 3 things
that they learned (collected by teacher) and
teacher writes on board what he/she felt the 3
things the students should have learned
This will help the students know if they
understood the lesson or if they should do
more on their own or seek additional instruction
Other Strategies

5. More strategies
• Homework
Before student does homework - teacher explains
what should be learned from the assignment
This gives the students what their goal for doing
homework is (not just busy work)
After homework is completed - teacher asks students
how they would do on an assessment dealing with the
homework
The student here assesses his knowledge on his own
Students would then either review what they did or
practice more of the same to better understand the
subject

6. Tools for Learning
• Teachers should provide students with tools (or
tricks) to help them learn when teaching lessons
• Examples:
First letter association technique - acronyms
ex. Order of operations in math
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
(Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add,
Subtract)
Rhyme Techniques – Make a rhyme to remember a
fact
Encourage students to use these techniques when
learning new material – this will help them remember
longer when information is relative to something else

7. Self-regulation
For teachers to help students become self-
regulated learners teachers need to make the
students aware of:
– What the student knows about the subject (use KWL)
– What is the goal of the lesson or project
– What are the resources available to the student
– What is the student’s anxiety level (how does the
student feel about learning or doing this assignment
or taking this test)

8. • Teachers must facilitate the following to
encourage the student to be self-regulated
– Time required to complete the task
Teacher sets time frame
– Plan study time
(teacher could set different mile stones for the
assignment to assist the students in this area
– Organize materials
make software available for the students – outlining,
flowcharting, etc.
– What strategies will be used by the student
students discuss strategies with partners and/or in
groups to make sure they are on track – setup by the
teacher

9. • Teacher needs to help monitor progress
and then to help the students reflect on
the assignment
– What is working – are the students on task
– Change strategies if needed – give students
different strategies if students experiencing
difficulty with task
– Self test on what is being learned – teacher
needs to encourage students to self test their
knowledge

10. Using technology to facilitate
metacognition skills
• A graphic organizer for students to use as they are
doing a project (KWL)
K
What I Know
W
What I Want to Learn
L
What I Have Learned

11. Inspiration (software product)
• To help students organize thoughts
• To do timelines to plan out projects (planning –
students learn to plan)
• To compare information
Blogging
• Students write what they already know and what
they are learning
• Students working together on projects
comparing information

12. Examples of Metacognition in the
Classroom
In these examples a math teacher is teaching Rules of
Order to middle school students. I used Bubblebye to
add comments to the videos.
The original videos were from
http://coe.jmu.edu/Mathvids2/strategies/tms.html
1. Video
2. Video
3. Video