In the previous edublog post, you learned about the definition of metacognition, its major components, and its potential effectiveness in improving student learning performance. It's now time to learn about metacognitive instructional strategies that have been shown to be effective in research.

There are various strategies for encouraging metacognition in our students. These strategies include encouraging our students to examine their current thinking, recognizing conceptual change, identifying their confusion, and providing avenues for them to monitor and evaluate their thinking. Numerous studies have shown that these strategies can lead to deep or meaningful learning for our students.

1. KWL Chart

The use of the KWL Chart is first on the list. It may sound very traditional to some of you, but it's a powerful strategy for assisting our students in activating prior knowledge and tracking their understanding. The KWL chart has three main columns: first, K – What I Know; second, W – What I Want to Know; and third, L – What I Have Learned. This chart can assist our students in organizing information prior to, during, and after a lesson or unit of study. Our students can complete a KWL chart in online distance learning by using appropriate digital tools such as Padlet. You could also use Google Jamboard, Google Slides with Pear Deck, or other tools.

2. Mind mapping

Mind mapping is another research-based strategy that can support students' metacognitive thinking. A mind map is a graphical representation of a person's information or thought processes. It is a metacognitive learning strategy that allows students to visualize their learning and see the big picture of what they are learning, particularly in complex and challenging topics such as Science or Mathematics. When students do mind mapping, they have the opportunity to: organize their thoughts, understand the relationships between concepts, create connections between things they know, and engage in deep thinking. In mind mapping, students will be able to synthesize their understanding of the entire unit using keywords, images, and various lines and arrows that connect each concept using various digital tools.

Students can make their mind maps with digital tools such as GitMind, Coggle, Google Slides with Pear Deck Extension, or Canva. If you use modular distance learning, you can include several mind maps or other visual learning aids, such as concept maps, in your modules to help students better understand the concepts presented.

3. Reflective Journals

Aside from the KWL chart and mind mapping, we must also provide opportunities for our students to practice reflective thinking. We must encourage them to record their learning experiences in their journal entries or learning logs. Questions about the content, assignments, activities, or their own ideas or thought processes about what happened in a particular learning experience may prompt them to write in their reflective journals. It's an effective active learning tool for getting students to think about how they think.

We simply need to make certain that we also provide our students with a protocol or set of guidelines to help them write their reflections. This can be accomplished by providing them with explicit questions and sentence starters. Some students may find it difficult to reflect, so we must provide them with explicit prompts or sentence frames to get them started.

There are some digital tools that we could use to support students' reflection in online distance learning, such as the Seesaw app, if you're familiar with it. Seesaw allows students to create a digital portfolio of their learning activities, complete with creative annotations and reflections.

Let's try to practice metacognition as we move through another strategy. So far, what are your thoughts on the KWL and mind mapping as metacognitive strategies? Have you implemented those strategies in your classes? What questions are you thinking about? Is there anything I said a while ago that has you perplexed? Hmm.

4. Metacognitive Prompts

Another research-based strategy that teachers can use is to incorporate metacognitive prompts into the learning activities or tasks that we assign to our students. So, this is something we did a while ago to try to check or monitor our comprehension or progress. Metacognitive prompts provide instructional support by assisting students in self-regulating their learning and thus achieving higher learning outcomes. What exactly are these metacognitive prompts? These are hints, clues, or questions aimed at students' metacognition during the planning, monitoring, and evaluation stages.

Before beginning a task, we must encourage our students to explicitly consider how they will approach the task, specifically what they need to accomplish, what goal they have, how much time they will spend on a particular task, and what resources they will require. Then, while performing the task, assist them in becoming consciously aware of whether or not they truly understand what they are doing. Are their expectations and goals being met? Are they becoming more focused and alert? And, of course, after completing the tasks, encourage them to evaluate the outcome, determining whether they met their objectives and whether the procedures or resources were effective. These processes are unconscious and automatic for expert students. It has already become a part of their system, but for novice students, it would be more beneficial to make these metacognitive prompts explicit to them. These prompts can easily be incorporated into our modules to assist students in completing tasks and encouraging them to become independent and effective learners.

5. Metacognitive Talk

Finally, promoting metacognitive talk in our classes is another research-based strategy. Improving and practicing students' metacognitive skills can also be accomplished by improving the quality of classroom discourse. Despite the fact that we are all in a distance learning environment, we must still ensure that our students' voices are heard and that they have opportunities to articulate their ideas and interact with their peers. For example, we must go beyond the closed sequence of 'teacher question–student response–teacher feedback' and use our questioning skills to stimulate and advance students' metacognitive thinking. Some common teaching strategies for better organizing and structuring classroom talk and dialogue include "Socratic talk," "talk partners," and "reciprocal teaching," in which students build on the ideas of their classmates. As a result, even though it is an online environment, they will feel as if they are a part of a learning community.

After reading this edublog post, you may have a better understanding of metacognition and the strategies we could use in our classes. So consider yourself a student, what are your take-aways from this blog? Do you believe your understanding of metacognition has grown?

As 21st century teachers, we must provide constructivist learning opportunities for our students to build on prior knowledge, examine current thinking, identify confusions, recognize conceptual change, and reflect on their own learning and experience. As an advocate of metacognition, I truly believe that supporting students through metacognition in conjunction with authentic learning can result in positive and significant changes in the teaching and learning process.

Teach SMARTer and learn SMARTer!