Middle Leader News
Dear Parents and Guardians,
A New Learner Quality: Be a Thinker
A popular buzz word in Education is ‘Metacognition’. I’ve always defined it as ‘Thinking about your thinking’. The more formal definition is an ‘awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.’ We encourage our students to use metacognitive strategies and directly teach them in our classrooms.
In Reading, we have the students ask questions to monitor their understanding, like “Does this make sense?” and “What do I think the author is trying to tell me here?”
In Maths, we teach different strategies to problem solve. We often ask the question, how did you get that answer? We constantly encourage students to explain how they got an answer and learn from their peers to hear other ways to solve problems.
In Science, students might keep a learning journal where they record their initial thoughts about a concept. As their thinking grows, they make new entries to their learning journal and by the end of the unit they can see how their thinking has grown across the unit.
If students learn to be good thinkers, they’ll be able to:
- Pose questions
- Self-monitor
- Plan, organize, evaluate and reflect
- Articulate their next steps and set goals
- Recall what they know, how they feel, believe and have experienced
- Describe the strategies they use when they get stuck
If you would like to know more about our Learner Qualities or have some input into how they are used in our community, please come along to our PEN meeting next week.
Have a wonderful week!
Warm Regards
Nicki Prentice