Metacognition

Metacognition

What is metacogniton?

Thinking about your thinking. Metacognition is one's 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.

Metacognition in the classroom

‘In the classroom, metacognitive knowledge equates to the children knowing themselves as learners; having an understanding of how they learning; and being more aware of the processes and actions that they use during learning or to achieve the learning outcome of a lesson.’ (Tarrant and Holt, 2016)

‘Making explicit what is actually going on during a learning activity can help deepen the understanding of the intended learning, making it more secure. For example, it may help a child who struggles to sort and classify materials in science or shapes in maths to understand exactly what processes are involved in sorting. To the unaware, sorting and classifying may like some magic, rather random process that goes on in someone’s head. Taking a metacognitive approach to sorting and classifying would involve breaking down the process to find out the unobservable steps.’ (Tarrant and Holt, 2016)

Metacognition will continue to be a main focus for us over the coming year as we take on the Thinking Matters project as a Trust . We will be focusing on how to incorporate metacognition across the different curriculum areas and year groups.

An Daras Skills Progression Map Metacognitive Skills v2 FINAL.pdf