I have started my observations in a 7th grade classroom. My first day of observations was a Friday. For Fridays lessons the teachers have decided to have the students do centers where the students that need to be retaught are helped, the students that have make up work that needs to be completed can work on that, and the rest of the students can choose between 4 different options for working on what they have been learning that week.
On this particular Friday Mrs. Dodds, the teacher, let them choose what center they wanted to do, except for the reteaching and make up work centers, asking them why they chose the center that they did and if they thought it would help them be more prepared for next week (declarative metacognition). Mrs. Dodds wanted the students to understand their strengths and use them to help prepare to move forward the next week. It was important that they completed one of these centers so if the student knew that a particular center was going to be difficult for them it was important to understand their weaknesses and choose another center.
Sitting in on a few of the reteaching sessions for the students that had not done well was also a very interesting study in student metacognition for me. The teacher went over as a group the concept that they were studying again, in this case it was characterization, and asked for questions. Then she individually talked to each student about what questions they missed, why they missed it, what they did to study for the quiz, why they think the skill they were struggling with was not learned in their studying, and what they could change to do better next time. She wanted them to come up with a metacongnitive plan that would help them prepare better for the re quiz. She taught them how to monitor their work on the previous quiz and find their own ways to fix the answers. Evaluating their quiz after it was taken can help them understand their thinking during the quiz better. I think this could be a great metacognition technique even for students who did not need to be retaught, everyone can benefit from taking a look at their work and taking what worked and making it part of their procedural metacognition knowledge.
These students having to not only think about how they think but explaining it to their teacher was eye opening for me. Letting students learn how they learn and applying that to better gain the concept knowledge that they need when they graduate is amazing.
Research done at: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/
On this particular Friday Mrs. Dodds, the teacher, let them choose what center they wanted to do, except for the reteaching and make up work centers, asking them why they chose the center that they did and if they thought it would help them be more prepared for next week (declarative metacognition). Mrs. Dodds wanted the students to understand their strengths and use them to help prepare to move forward the next week. It was important that they completed one of these centers so if the student knew that a particular center was going to be difficult for them it was important to understand their weaknesses and choose another center.
Sitting in on a few of the reteaching sessions for the students that had not done well was also a very interesting study in student metacognition for me. The teacher went over as a group the concept that they were studying again, in this case it was characterization, and asked for questions. Then she individually talked to each student about what questions they missed, why they missed it, what they did to study for the quiz, why they think the skill they were struggling with was not learned in their studying, and what they could change to do better next time. She wanted them to come up with a metacongnitive plan that would help them prepare better for the re quiz. She taught them how to monitor their work on the previous quiz and find their own ways to fix the answers. Evaluating their quiz after it was taken can help them understand their thinking during the quiz better. I think this could be a great metacognition technique even for students who did not need to be retaught, everyone can benefit from taking a look at their work and taking what worked and making it part of their procedural metacognition knowledge.
These students having to not only think about how they think but explaining it to their teacher was eye opening for me. Letting students learn how they learn and applying that to better gain the concept knowledge that they need when they graduate is amazing.
Research done at: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/
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