Effective Metacognitive Strategies for the Classroom
Presented by Stacie VanLoenen
Traci Powell
svanloenen@pasadenaisd.org
tpowell@pasadenaisd.org
“Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”
…”girl, there’s only two or three things I know
for sure.” She put her head back, grinned,
and made a small impatient noise. Her
eyes glittered as bright as a sun reflecting
off the scales of a cottonmouth’s back. She
spat once and shrugged. “Only two or three
things. That’s right,” she said. “Of course
it’s never the same and I’m never as sure
as I’d like to be.”
Dorothy Allison, from her memoir, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure
“Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”
• One thing I’m sure about when it comes to
reading is…
• What makes you certain?
• What could change your mind?
“Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”
• One thing I once believed about reading
was…
• What made your certain?
• What made you change your mind?
Metacognitive Strategies
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Monitoring for meaning-knowing when you know, knowing
when you don’t know
Using and creating schema-making connections between
the new and the known, building and activating
background knowledge
Asking questions-generating questions before, during,
and after reading that lead you deeper into the text
Determining importance-deciding what matters most,
what is worth remembering
Inferring-combining background knowledge with
information from the text to predict, conclude, make
judgments, interpret
Using sensory and emotional images-creating mental
images to deepen and stretch meaning
Synthesizing-creating an evolution of meaning by
combining understanding with knowledge from other
texts/sources
Reading Gradual Release of Responsibility
Demonstration
Shared
Guided
Independent
I Do
You Watch
I Do
You Help
You Do
I Help
You Do
I Watch
Metacognitive Tools
Teacher
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mini-Lesson
Think Aloud
Shared Reading
Anchor Charts
Concrete Experiences
Characters
Props
Conferring
Student
• Independent Reading
• Shared Reading
• Reader’s Response
Journals
• Sticky Notes
• Graphic Organizers
• Think-Pair-Share
• Foldables
Teacher Tool: Think Aloud
“The think aloud gives the students the
opportunity to see our thinking when we
read, the connections we make, the
questions we ask, our inferences, and our
predictions.”
“It is through the read aloud that the teachers
show students their thinking process when
reading.”
Strategies That Work
Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis
Teacher Tool: Mini-Lesson
Explicit Teaching designed to help students work
more productively during independent reading.
Purposes:
– Teaching focuses on specific reading strategies
and skills as well as the elements of literature.
– Provides opportunities to participate and behave
like a reader.
– Creates a body of known texts that children can
use for independent reading.
Teacher Tool: Mini-Lesson
Look for patterns in your conference
records.
Observe students while they share or during
discussion.
Attend to students’ written responses for
evidence of their understanding.
Attend to reading behavior during Guided
Reading lessons.
Student needs determine the immediate
priorities of your teaching.
Utilize your TEKS as a resource.
Teacher Tool: Mini-Lesson
1. Introduce the concept with clear, concrete
examples.
2. Provide opportunity for student interaction.
3. Immediately ask readers to apply their
learning to one or two new examples.
4. Reinforce and extend the learning in
conferences, sharing sessions, and
subsequent mini lessons.
Teacher Tool/Student Tool:
Shared Reading
Teacher involves children in the text by using
a big book, enlarged text,
and/or text on the overhead.
Purposes:
– Provides social support from the group.
– Provides opportunities to participate and
behave like a reader.
– Creates a body of known texts that children
can use for independent reading.
Punctuation Promenade
The punctuation marks went walking,
On a day that was sunny and bright,
They started out at half-past noon,
And didn’t get home till night.
The comma kept pausing briefly,
For just a little rest,
The parentheses said, “Hurry up!
(That comma is such a pest.)”
The dash was like the commaTaking short breaks-to.
The colon was introducing lists,
“Here’s what we need to do:”
Semi-colon was joining up
Some phrases that seemed related,
“We’re not getting anywhere;
This walk’s too complicated.”
Brain Juice English Fresh Squeezed!
By Carol Diggory Shields
Teacher Tool: Anchor Charts
“Anchor charts capture the language that
demonstrates strategic thinking so that kids
know when, how, and why to use a strategy
in their reading and can refer to the chart for
support.”
Strategies That Work
Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis
Metacognition
Good readers think about their own
thinking while they read.
•
•
•
•
•
Thinking Stems
I’m thinking…because…
I’m noticing…because…
I’m wondering…because…
I’m seeing…
“Real Reading” is a combination of what
I’m feeling…because…the author has to say and what is going
+
on in my head.
Schema
Good readers connect what they
know with what they are reading.
Thinking Stems
•
•
•
•
•
That reminds me of…because…
I think I already know…because…
I have a connection to…
I have schema for…
I can relate to…because…
Visualizing
Good readers picture what is happening.
Thinking Stems
• I’m picturing…
• I can imagine…
• I can
feel…see…smell…taste…touch…hear…
• My mental images include…
Asking Questions
Good readers ask themselves
questions when they read.
Thinking Stems
•
•
•
•
•
I wonder…
Why…
I don’t understand…
It confused me…
How could…
Inferring
Good readers think about what’s going to happen and
make inferences/predictions based on what they
know and what they have read.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Thinking Stems
I can tell that… because…
My guess is…
Maybe…
Perhaps…
It could be that…
This could mean…
I predict…
I infer…
Monitor for Meaning
Good readers stop to think about their reading and
know what to do when they don’t understand.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Thinking Stems
Is this making sense?
Wait! What is going on here?
Observe what you notice
What have I learned?
What did you notice
Do I need to reread?
Link to your life
What does this word mean?
How do I say this word?
What text clues help me fill in the missing information?
I didn’t get the … so I…
Determining Importance
Good readers understand the main idea of the
text and what the author’s message is.
•
•
•
•
•
Thinking Stems
What’s important here…
What matters to me…
One thing that we should notice…
I want to remember…
Your brain is like a
It’s interesting that…
strainer!
Synthesizing
Good readers identify the most important
ideas and restated them in their own words.
•
•
•
•
•
Thinking Stems
Now I understand why…
I’m changing my mind about…
I used to think _______, but now I think…
My new thinking is…because…
I’m beginning to think…because…
Teacher Tool: Concrete Experiences
“An initial exposure to a thinking strategy; a
lesson with a concrete focus. Connections
are easily made, creating bridges of
thinking from the known to the new.
Concrete lessons anchor future learning.”
Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Thinking
Tanny McGregor
Teacher Tool: Characters/Props
“Metaphors help us make reading
comprehension, an otherwise invisible process,
more concrete for our students.”
“When we use metaphors in our teaching, we
help students learn by linking a new idea to a
more familiar one. The metaphor becomes a
symbol for thinking, or in this case it represents
the strategies for reading.”
Interactive Think-Aloud Lessons
Lori Oczkus
Teacher Tool: Conferring
Student Tool: Independent Reading
“Independent reading is much more than a just-sitthere-and-read experience. It gives the teacher a
structured time to touch base with each student
over a period of time, assess progress, and target
instruction. Even more important, it gives students
time to read what they want to read, share what
they’ve read, and receive the support they need
for further reading explorations and reflections.”
Traci Gardner
Student Tool:
Reader’s Response Journal
“Reader’s response helps our students
increase their ability to frame questions,
express their opinions, and degenerate new
knowledge and ideas. In the process, they
discover both the intellectual and emotional
pleasure inherent in literature as well as the
joy of sharing this pleasure with others.”
Strategies That Work
Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis
Student Tool: Sticky Notes
• Sticky note discussions are powerful tools that:
– Help students organize and better understand different reading
selections
– Provide an outlet that allows the student to stop, think, and
respond to the written text
– Provide guidelines and goals for comprehending each text
– Decrease the chances of boredom by targeting specific skills
*It is easy to target those students with comprehension difficulties, but
to also allow them to validate their responses along with the others.
Examples: Something you liked about the text, connections to the text, something you
disliked about the text, comparisons/contrasts, questions you have about the text,
descriptive words or phrases that paint a mental picture that you can illustrate
Student Tool:
Graphic Organizers
• Graphic organizers can:
– Help students focus on text structure (differences
between fiction and nonfiction) as they read
– Provide students with tools they can use to
examine and show relationships in a text
– Help readers focus on concepts and how they
care related to other concepts
– Help students read and understand textbooks and
picture books
Student Tool:
Think-Pair-Share
• Students learn, in part, by being able to talk about the
content. Think-pair-share provides a structure for this
discussion. It limits off task thinking and off task behavior.
Accountability is built in because each must report to a
partner, and then partners must report to the class.
Students get to try out their answers in private, before
having to go public. Kids who never speak up in class are
at least giving an answer to someone. Because the silent
thinking time is built in, you eliminate the problem of the
eager student always shouting out the answer.
Student Tool: Foldables
• Foldables:
–
–
–
–
–
–
encourage student ownership
provide a kinesthetic component
promote long-term retention
promote reading
encourage critical thinking
display and arrange data making it easier for students to grasp
concepts
– replaces teacher-generated writing, or worksheets, with
student-generated print
Assessment and Evaluation
Formative Assessment
Summative Evaluation
• Occurs while learning is
happening
• Drives instruction
• A mastery check
• Did you understand?
• The final piece
• Examples: Running
Records, WRAP/DRA,
Observing think alouds,
sticky notes, retellings,
reader’s response, Literacy
Folder
• Examples: Rubrics,
Thinking Maps, Graphic
Organizers, Foldables,
Open-Ended Response,
paper/pencil
Reading is Thinking
“Each time one prematurely
teaches a child something he
could have discovered himself,
that child is kept from
understanding it completely.”
Piaget