I recently came across a great definition for metacognition in Emily Lai’s, Metacognition: A Literature Review. The definition is  “Awareness and management of one’s own thought.”

When I try to explain what I do with metacognition and reading to my non-educator friends, they often say something like, “I can’t believe you have to teach that to students. It must just be because they’re on computers so much.”

And that makes me wonder if they naturally think about their thinking and manage their thinking or–and this is a terrible possibility–whether they don’t think about and manage their thinking and don’t see the need for it.

I realize now that I was a plot junkie growing up and that if I had been taught reading strategies and self-questioning in school I would have been a much stronger, much more thoughtful reader.

Last summer I wrote a short, 50-page, book that explains metacognition and how to use it in your classroom. It’s on sale at Amazon for $9.50 in paperback and $1.99 on Kindle. It has many eye-catching full-color illustrations and is designed for the busy teacher who wants to learn the basics or increase their knowledge of metacognition.

The simplest definition of metacognition is “thinking about thinking to improve learning.” Metacognition includes knowing what you know and what you don’t know; understanding person, task, and strategy variables; planning, monitoring, evaluating and reflecting. Metacognition is an invaluable skill for learning in every area: academic, socio-emotional, the arts, physical education, and service education. It is an integral part of Emotional Intelligence, 21st Century Skills, Problem Solving, Fixed/Growth Mindsets, Critical Thinking, Executive Functions as well as Inquiry Learning and Problem-Based Learning. Learn how to strengthen your metacognitive teaching skills and revitalize your teaching life while doing it, as you create a community of thinking in your classroom.

I recently presented a couple of workshops for administrators and teachers in Metuchen, New Jersey. Here is the presentation.

What is Metacognition?

Metacognition refers to awareness of one’s own knowledge—what one does and doesn’t know—and one’s ability to understand, control, and manipulate one’s cognitive processes (Meichenbaum, 1985). It includes knowing when and where to use particular strategies for learning and problem solving as well as how and why to use specific strategies. Metacognition is the ability to use prior knowledge to plan a strategy for approaching a learning task, take necessary steps to problem solve, reflect on and evaluate results, and modify one’s approach as needed (Teal, 2012).

To put it simply, metacognition is being aware of and understanding your cognitive processes.

Why Should we Explicitly Teach Metacognition?

Yesterday I read Visible Learning for Literacy by Fisher, Frey, and Hattie. They include a thought-provoking list in their appendix effect sizes for various educational practices and environmental factors.  There are negative effect sizes (-0.20 – 0.00 approx.), developmental effect sizes (0.00 – 0.20 approx.), teacher effect sizes (0.20 – 0.40 approx.), and medium to high effect sizes (0.40+).

Number 14 on the list of 150 measured items is Metacognitive Strategies with a whopping effect size of 0.69.  Teaching Strategies is number 23 on the list with an effect size of 0.62.

We must couple teaching of strategies with teaching of metacognitive strategies to receive full value from each. How?  By teaching students to continually question their understanding of material followed by purposefully choosing strategies to help them comprehend what they read.

P.S. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to any teacher that negative effect sizes include summer vacation, retention, and television.

Teal Center Staff. “Fact Sheet: Metacognitive Processes | Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL).” Fact Sheet: Metacognitive Processes | Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL). U.S. Department of Education, Feb. 2012. Web. 13 July 2016.

Lately, I’ve been making the adjustments needed to teach reading to this year’s group of readers.  Each year, the class-wide needs and the individual needs vary greatly.

I’ve identified visualizing and inferring as class-wide needs along with a generalized need to pinpoint where comprehension is breaking down.  First, I taught through Dr. Goodreader and we continue to use the chart daily to pinpoint our needs.  I’m dealing with inferring and visualizing through class-wide mini-lessons and read alouds.

Then I began to imcorporate portions of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser’s amazing book, The Daily Cafe.  I posted and taught the strategies from their daily cafe under the following divisions:

C:  Comprehension, A:  Accuracy, F:  Fluency, and E:  Enlarging Vocabulary. 

Then I had each of them consider their weakest area in the comprehension category and set that as a goal for the quarter.  This self-organized them into groups.  I figured that was a no-lose proposition because they would learn no matter which category they chose.

I’ve been meeting with these groups every few days.  I give them a short mini-lesson, and then a specific assignment.  The assignments are often painfully simple, but I’ve found they are already helping quite a bit.  The self-monitoring group has a sticky note that they move to the bottom of each page as they read and ask themselves the question, “Did that make sense?” at the bottom of each page.  The determining importance group asks themselves after each conversation in the book they are reading, “What was important in this conversation?” and puts a sticky flag next to the important parts.  The prediction group makes predictions and confirms them using text evidence.  Simple.  But.  Effective.  Thank you, 2 Sisters!