Teaching Tip #10

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #10

A study hack to help kids learn more.  Make them aware of “metacognition.”

Metacognition, as I learned in graduate school, is basically thinking about how you think.  Or thinking about how you learn.  Too often, this article claims – and I agree with it from experience and from watching students struggle to study and learn – students just stumble blindly from task to task without realizing how they learn or think best.

I did this until college.  At the university level – thanks to some study courses I took – I discovered how I learned best: by re-writing and rewriting information down.  As a visual learner, this helped me not just see what I was writing down but it helped me remember the information better too.  This is why when I’m listening to a podcast now, I not only remember the information on the podcast, but I can also vividly recall where I was on the road when I heard the information for the first time.  Or when I read something new, I can often picture where a specific term is on the actual page itself.  So when I have to study and learn new information, I’m aware of this and apply it to what I learn.

But how are our students aware of their own metacognition?  How do we go about showing them this?  Isn’t it just easier to drill information in their skulls so they can pass a test? Yes.  Except – based off of our test scores – they aren’t passing those tests.  Or at least enough of them are not passing those tests.  Thus, we have to re-think what we teach.  Right?