Writing to Learn Promotes Metacognition

(Reflective Thinking)

Writing to learn is the in-class writing that helps students engage deeply with content, build connections, and retain what they've learned. Writing to learn means using writing as a tool to promote content learning; when students write they think on paper.

Teachers who assign writing activities do so to help students learn subject matter, clarify and organize their thoughts, and improve their retention of content. Writing to learn tasks can be based on reading, classroom discussion, teacher presentation, media such as a video, or hands-on activities.

Being able to write is as important to learning as being able to read (Vilardi & Connolly, 1989).

Middle School Parent/Teacher Conference Tips.

When meeting with parents at open house night, or in individual parent-teacher conferences, teachers might find it helpful to tuck a few ideas into their repertoire.

Differentiate. Some parents aren’t going to be involved at all. They won’t call, write, question, or offer themselves to the learning process. Other parents will email the teacher for clarifications or explanations frequently. Neither approach is right or wrong, but for teachers, it just means figuring out which parents will be heavily involved and which parents won’t, and reacting to each parent’s needs.

Acknowledge the awkward. “It’s hard work to parent a middle school child, isn’t it?” I’ve heard teachers start conversations with parents this way, and then follow with, “It’s hard work to teach one, too. But I feel really good about us working together. Let’s talk about what we both want for your child.” This acknowledges the shared work—hey, we’re working toward the same goal, and it’s not easy, but we can do it, and we can do it well. It creates unity rather than separation.

Strike a deal. I once had the daughter of my superintendent in my class. I was nervous as a cat at open house night; I had deep admiration and respect for him as a superintendent, and here I was, encountering him as a parent. He shook my hand and grinned. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll believe half of what she says about you, and you believe half of what she says about me.” We laughed, me with relief: I appreciated his acknowledgment that middle schoolers rarely tell the full story about their learning at school, and they tend to lionize their teachers. I’ve used that approach more than once with parents: Let’s recognize the communication tactics of middle schoolers and agree to be on the same team—a grown-up team of adults working toward the same goal.

Be transparent. Reading and writing teachers at the middle school level walk a delicate tightrope: they want and need to connect with students through texts and writing experiences, but have to show caution if their students want to go deep—by reading texts their parents wouldn’t like, or writing pieces that dare, challenge, and question everything. It makes a lot of sense to communicate any concerns or red flags to parents. Thought experiments are normal and expected at this age. They are also, often, pretty awesome. Shouldn’t parents get to share this part of the process?

Offer opportunity. The days of volunteering in the classroom are long gone for parents of middle schoolers, for many legitimate reasons—not least being that a student’s mortification would be too immense for words. It’s up to the teacher, then, to let parents be involved. School-to-home journals, family literacy events, shared texts, digital platforms with photographs (ideally created and maintained by students), and shared work samples are all ways to keep parents present.

Understand the anxiety. Now that I’m living with a middle schooler, I finally understand how most middle school parents are walking around with their stomachs turned inside out much of the time. There is so much to worry about, after all: social stuff, emotional stuff, behavioral stuff, Internet stuff, smartphone stuff, school stuff, preparing-for-the-future stuff. All of it. It depletes and confuses us. Which is just another thing to worry about. I find the best thing to offer the parent of a middle school is a little empathy and the ability to alleviate their worry if we can.

Don’t make homework horrible. When homework is drudgery for a middle schooler, everyone suffers. Middle school students can smell busywork like a shark smelling blood, and they’ll snap in anger or sink into apathy. When a student is doing homework that has no meaning, the frustration and insecurity of the age itself compounds and explodes—often at the parent. Everything sours: the student’s thoughts about school, the parent’s ability to help, a teacher’s credibility. It is just not worth it. At this time of life, more than ever, a teacher shouldn’t be the reason behind conflict at home, and certainly not because of a reading or writing assignment. Homework should add value to the child’s reading and writing. If it doesn’t, it’s time to rethink things.

Jennifer Schwanke, Choice Literacy Blog, 2018.

Writing is Thinking

Writing is a cognitive process that allows students to "show what they know," which not only aids teachers in assessing students, but also helps them plan appropriate instructional strategies that will most benefit each student. Nonfiction writing will help students score higher on tests, but more importantly, will prepare them for life!

When a writer connects their ideas into a written piece, they give voice and direction to their thinking. When a student chooses the words to describe their learning they are giving voice to their thinking. .A writer goes on the record as someone who thinks about why they do what they do, and understands how each decision affects the results.

Through writing we assist our students in developing a knack for critical thinking.

How to Get Students Thinking

Often teachers believe their students are thinking about new learning because they can recall, recognize or reproduce a fact, a definition, or a simple one-step procedure. This is new learning but it is not thinking, it is just as mentioned: recall, recognition or reproduction.

Thinking occurs when our students are engaged in inquiry. How can our teachers engage our students in inquiry?

*Ask questions that encourage thinking.

*Give students time to create their own questions about the learning they will participate in as active learners. This is one of the single most productive methods to get students intimately involved in their own learning.

* During tests allow students the opportunity to explain what they did to demonstrate learning.

*Ask students to make observations: What did you observe?

*Ask students to make claims and provide evidence. What can I claim? How do I know? Why am I making these claims?

*Assign challenging reading and ask students how their thinking compares to the thinking of others.

*Provide time for reflection: How have your ideas changed? Why?

Metacognition: Thinking about Thinking

Metacognitive awareness is necessary to develop greater intellectual maturity. Consider the metacognitive awareness, thinking about thinking, that teachers use to plan instruction. This type of planning allows teachers a time to reflect on their work, prompting them to evaluate their instructional goals, methods, and outcomes.

This time for self-reflection is always a good thing; asking questions and self-reflection are natural to teaching.

Self-reflective questions teachers can ask include:

*What objectives do I want to accomplish?

*Which academic vocabulary words should I focus on?

*Which disciplinary vocabulary words are necessary for students to understand a concept?

*How can I teach so the students understand my explanations? What is good for teacher planning is also good for student learning. Research that has spanned three decades indicates that metacognition has positive effects on students' academic and personal development. Much of the research has shown that metacognition is vital to social learning and personality development which helps our students increase practical intelligence resulting in personal insights into their own learning.

When our students have metacognitive instruction about their own thinking while learning they become aware of their own learning challenges and learn methods to work through these challenges, reducing the frustration that can occur when a new concept is introduced. Teachers know that their students need to learn higher level thinking skills because cognitive demands become more complex from one grade to the next.

"Through the lifelong skill of metacognitive thinking, students can be taught to reflect on their own learning processes while they complete learning tasks. It is evident that metacognitive awareness creates self-regulated learning, allowing students to develop greater intellectual maturity" (Joseph, 2009).

More on Writing to Develop Thinking

This post is from NCTE member Jenny Kirsch. She teaches middle school English in New York City. She is also an associate at Hewitt’s Center for Teaching & Learning Through Writing, where she works on developing Writing-to-Learn practices for students and faculty in Grades 5-12. She is interested in the intersection of reading and writing, and believes technology can enhance both of these pursuits.

In recent years, as I’ve incorporated more writing-to-learn practices into my classroom, a new solution to this challenge has arisen and taken hold. Formal writing assignments are still accompanied by graphic organizers and group discussions that give students a sense of how much they should write, but short writing responses are quantified differently. I might pose a question about a class novel and ask for 5–7 sentences, but more often, I share a writing prompt and let my students know they have 10 minutes (or 5, or 15) to respond to it. The first go at this always produces a bit of anxiety for some students, but soon our classroom becomes a place where writing is an exercise in thinking and self-expression, in considering ideas and questions and putting them down in complete sentences. The end goal moves away from “Is this long enough?” and toward “Does my writing say what I wanted it to?”

Thoughts on Being a Mentor...

A Few Things I've Learned as a Mentor

Early in my career as a teacher I was lucky enough to have some wonderful, experienced educators to guide me through the process as a beginning teacher. There was Rosalie Lipari a wonderful teacher who gave me advice and just told me what to do in difficult situations during my first few years of teaching in Oak Forest, IL, and Mr. Stern, Fair Lawn, NJ, one of the best principals I've ever been privileged to work with, he was very direct and honest and even walked me through the process of becoming a junior high school reading teacher. Mr. Pipp, Asst. Supt. also from Fair Lawn NJ who gave me the confidence to take on a leadership role in my new position. Michele Lawrence, the most amazing, energetic principal at Whittier High School. During the earthquake that damaged our school she carried a big wrench and knew how to use it to turn off the gas in the event of an emergency and yet her caring for our students in need was something I still strive to achieve. Lynda Cox and Jean King were an amazing team of supportive and esteem building educators in Easton, CT. I could go on and on as I reflect on my many years as a teacher.

When the tables turned, I was lucky enough to become a literacy coach and I found myself in the role as a mentor teacher, I tried to emulate the best qualities of the people who mentored me. Over the years I have had the privilege to mentor a few teachers and I continue to learn about teaching and being a mentor.

• First, be a friend. The best way to guide is through a genuine, collaborative relationship. I find myself learning from the teachers I work with and the ideas they share are often so innovative. that I build on their ideas by developing a friendship with the teachers. This is not easy. Not every teacher wants to collaborate, so I've learned to watch for those opportunities to develop a friendly collaboration.

• Second, ask questions. It is important for our students to learn about the benefits of questioning as they learn. I, too, have learned that asking questions often allows me the chance to gain insights and a better understanding of what my colleague was seeking from me. Asking questions helps to initiate a conversation that will lead to increased learning on both of our parts and improved teaching.

• Last, share and model. Sometimes students need to see how we think through how a lesson is developed, how a skill is taught, or how curriculum is unpacked to create learning. I don't always have the answers, but if I can share my experiences and model a lesson for the teacher, I can create a situation that allows for conversation and deeper thinking about the craft of teaching.

Every great teacher I know has a few tricks they learned as they were learning the craft. They were willing to create the space required to help me become a better teacher. I appreciate all that was done for me as I was learning, I hope I have the same impact on a few of the teachers I have worked with along the way.

The Best Teachers Change Their Minds... And That's a Good Thing

I just finished reading an article that advocates for teachers to rethink some of the commonly held ideas about assessment, instruction, and learning. The author, Terry Heick (2017) writes:

"In many ways, there is no “right” or “wrong,” but only degrees of fit and subjectivity. If you’re changing your mind—about the role of technology in learning, the ideal lesson template, or the best audiences for project-based learning products—that means you’re growing.You’re reacting to formal and informal data in front of you every day. Anecdotal data, parent conferences, literacy rates, test scores, and a thousand other points.

You’re responding to the progression of technology in the world around you. You’re changing to meet the needs of a new generation of students whose natural skills and interests seem to tend towards project-based learning. You see the cognitive rigor of a game like Portal 2, and you wonder if game-based learning might have a place–if even a small place–in the classroom you share with students. (You no longer call it “your” classroom.)

The best teachers change their mind because things themselves change. 21st century learning is, above all else, diverse, interdependent, and formless. Technology, culture, academic standards, assessment forms, and the cost–and format–of higher education all evolve endlessly.

Which means, as their most powerful common mediator, you have to as well."

Heick's writing gave me something to think about. I have changed my mind on the topics mentioned in his writing, as well as several others. It is important for our students' development to keep an open mind and look at what current research and literature says about best practices in teaching. These evolve as we become more experienced teachers, but we cannot let our experience stand in the way of important mind shifts that make learning more attainable for our students.

Make a change in your approach to teaching: a new reading protocol, a new strategy, or add a new approach to your content. It may help you see your students in a new light.

Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior. He is a proponent of progressive education and has offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, managing, and American society more generally, drawing in each case from social science research. Here, his thoughts on instructional scaffolding. Instructional scaffolding is the support given during the learning process which is tailored to the needs of the student with the intention of helping the student achieve his/her learning goals. This learning process is designed to promote a deeper level of learning.

Deconstructing “Scaffolding”

By Alfie Kohn

It was the late Jerome Bruner and his colleagues who first thought to invoke the field of (building) construction in creating an educational metaphor. They described the process of providing learners with temporary support for what they can’t yet do on their own as “scaffolding.”[1] It’s a nifty figure of speech, and the practice itself seems just as appealing: After all, who could object to offering students a boost until they no longer need it?

But as I’ve thought more carefully about scaffolding — and watched as it, like so many other promising terms, has been appropriated by non- and even anti-progressive educators – I’ve become increasingly skeptical. Here are some questions I think we might want to ask when the word is casually tossed around.

1. What’s the hurry? Often the point of scaffolding is not to provide support just because it’s needed but as a strategy for expediting improvement in academic performance. When this is done with young children in particular, might it represent another example of rushing kids along? (“Well, okay, I’ll help you with the big words, but I expect you to be able to read this on your own by the end of the month.”) Could scaffolding with this goal in mind displace the sort of exploration that’s driven purely by curiosity?

2. Must self-sufficiency always be the goal? It’s immensely rewarding to watch kids grow and become increasingly adept at what they’re doing. But we often take for granted the desirability of getting them to do more and more on their own. (By definition, scaffolding isn’t meant to stay up indefinitely.) From a psychological perspective, autonomy — experiencing a sense of volition and being able to act on one’s preferences — is not the same thing as independence. Some very healthy, autonomous young people aren’t particularly independent, and some who are independent really can’t be described as autonomous.

From a cultural perspective, meanwhile, independence is closely connected to an individualistic worldview that is far from universal. It’s more commonly endorsed by men than by women, and it’s more common in the West than the East, in industrialized than nonindustrialized societies, and among professionals as compared with working-class people. For many people, interdependence is valued at least as much as independence — which means that engaging in tasks together, continuing to rely on one another, might be something to be celebrated rather than outgrown.[2]

3. What’s the task? Gay Ivey, a literacy educator, observes that scaffolding is sometimes provided in order to “get students through difficult, unappealing texts.” Even if it works to elicit their compliance, she adds, it’s unlikely to “motivate students to continue learning about that topic on their own.”[3] The broader implication is that a preoccupation with the degree of difficulty — and how best to provide scaffolding – serves to distract us from the far more important question of what we’re asking students to do. Just because a task meets the Goldilocks test with respect to challenge level – neither too easy nor too hard — doesn’t mean it’s worth doing. It may hold no meaning for students. It may have simply been imposed on them, without their having any say in the matter. In short, if we’re busy fiddling with scaffolding, we’re less likely to stop and say, “Hold on — do students really need to do this at all?”

4. Whose meanings? Even if students have been asked to do something that’s potentially meaningful, the assignment may just involve reproducing someone else’s understanding rather than making sense of an idea for oneself. Suppose a teacher’s goal is for students to adopt a conventional method for solving a math problem or setting up an experiment, or to be able to repeat the teacher’s (or textbook’s) interpretation of a story or an historical event. And suppose students are having trouble doing so. In that case, it might make sense to give them a hand, a hint, to take them halfway there — in short, to scaffold. But if the goal were to help students find their own way into the topic, to construct meaning in order to understand what they’re doing more deeply, then scaffolding, at least as the term is typically used, would not be particularly useful.[4]

Too often, however, the problem runs deeper: It’s not that students are merely adopting the teacher’s meanings; it’s that meanings aren’t even involved — just the recitation of right answers, the rote recall of bits of information. Indeed, a failure to ask the four questions I’ve offered here may explain why the idea of scaffolding has been appropriated by behaviorists — people who still champion direct instruction, still make kids practice a series of skills devoid of context, still offer rewards for success (or compliance) as if they were training a pet. How ironic that a construction metaphor is placed in the service of a distinctly unconstructivist approach to education.

Of course scaffolding could be defined differently, in which case we needn’t dispense with the word or the practice as long as we were careful to explain what we meant. So what would a better version look like?

* It would offer support for the learner’s own goals, not just a technique for propelling her up an adult’s ladder.

* It would allow for the possibility of collaboration among students rather than assuming each must eventually complete all tasks alone.

* It would be done in such a way as to respond to each student’s needs rather than being presented as one-size-fits-all assistance — for example, by assigning the same (scaffolded) task to everyone.

* The support would change along with the learner’s understanding — which means changes in the type of support, not just in the amount, frequency, or duration.

* It would involve suggesting new possibilities for learners to consider, helping them to “take an active, inventive role and reconstruct the task through their own understanding” rather than just “passively absorb[ing] the strategies of the adult,” as the early-childhood educator Anne B. Smith put it.[5]

* Above all, the process of devising appropriate scaffolding would not displace the more important task of working with students to devise a thoughtful, question-based, learner-centered curriculum that involves understanding ideas from the inside out.

NOTES

1. The concept is sometimes attributed to the early twentieth-century Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, but as far as I can tell, he never used the word — nor did Bruner et al. mention Vygotsky in the article where they introduced it. However, Vygotsky’s concept of the “zone of proximal development” is related to, and probably helped to inspire, the notion of scaffolding; Bruner was certainly quite familiar with Vygotsky’s work.

2. I discuss the limits of individualism in two books, one that explores the idea of altruism (The Brighter Side of Human Nature) and another that challenges the ubiquitous, ferocious attacks on “helicopter parenting” (The Myth of the Spoiled Child).

3. Gay Ivey, “Texts That Matter,” Educational Leadership, March 2010, p. 20.

4. For a discussion of similar concerns about scaffolding from a constructivist perspective, see Catherine Twomey Fosnot, “Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning,” in Fostnot, ed., Constructivism: Theory, Perspectives, and Practice (Teachers College Press, 1996), esp. p. 21. James Wertsch, a Vygotsky scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, raised a related concern regarding different types of meaning: “A scaffold is something you build up. You build a structure beside it, then build up the scaffolding some more, and the structure gets built up more. Eventually you take the scaffolding away. The problem is that this metaphor fails to account for qualitative transformation [where]…a partial structure…works well for this stage of development, but now we’re going to have to tear the whole thing down and switch from building in wood to building in brick. We don’t do that with scaffolding. Scaffolding has this kind of incremental quantitative development notion built into it…[whereas] during qualitative change you have major upheaval” (Brenda Fyfe, “A Conversation with James V. Wertsch: Part II,” Constructivist, Spring 1997, pp. 5-6).

5. Anne B. Smith, “Early Childhood Educare: Seeking a Theoretical Framework in Vygotsky’s Work,” International Journal of Early Years Education, vol. 1, 1993: 47-62.