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Meta-cognition or ‘Thinking about Thinking’
Recent research from the Sutton Trust has provided schools with a detailed analysis of the
most effective strategies to raise attainment and close the achievement gap. Amongst the
top three is ‘meta-cognitive strategies’, defined by the Trust as:
“teaching approaches which make learners think more explicitly about how they learn. This
is usually through teaching pupils strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their own
learning.”
The strength of the evidence supporting the effectiveness of meta-cognition strategies is
high. Studies show that children who develop their metacognitive skills make faster progress
and that it is particularly effective for low achieving children.
In the classroom, we often see that ‘successful’ learners have a good understanding of
what they know and do not overestimate their abilities. They are persistent and are able
to change learning strategies if something goes wrong or they are not making
progress. ‘Struggling’ learners, on the other hand, tend to overestimate their abilities,
they find it difficult to see how the same approach can be used in comparable situations
and tend to give up when things go wrong rather than try a different approach. They do
not plan or develop a strategy to complete a task and do not monitor their own progress.
In order to accelerate progress all children need to be able to do the following in class:
 be able to identify the skills or processes required to complete a task.
 be clear about what they already know and what they still need to know.
 think whether there is information that will be useful to them and how they find that
information. If they get stuck, are there resources available to them and can they
use those resources?
 review their learning and think about their ‘next steps’.
This can be achieved by supporting pupils to develop the following skills:
Connecting new
information with
former knowledge
Planning,
monitoring and
evaluating the
thinking
process
Selecting
thinking
strategies
deliberatley
The following pages outline some of the key metacognitive tools and activities that teachers
can use in classrooms as part of daily practice to help close the achievement gap.
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Approach 1: Planning, Monitoring and Evaluating
Own Learning
We need to support pupils to become self-regulated (independent) learners who monitor
and reflect upon their own learning. We need to teach them HOW to learn so that pupils
know how to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning.
During the monitoring phase
pupils should ask themselves:
How am I doing? Am I on the right
track? How should I proceed
further? What information is
important to remember? Should
I move in a different direction?
What can I do if I
don’t understand?
See ‘Strategies to Improve Pupils’
Monitoring & Evaluation Skills’
section below.
During the planning phase pupils
should ask themselves: What am
I supposed to learn? What prior
knowledge will help me with this
task? What should I do first? How
much time do I have to
complete this? In what direction
do I want my thinking to take me?
Plan & Set
Learning
Goals
The SelfRegulated
Learner
Evaluate &
Adapt
Behaviour
Apply
Strategies &
Monitor
Progress
See ‘Strategies to Improve Pupils’
Planning Skills’ section below.
During the evaluation phase pupils should ask themselves: How well did I do? What did I learn? Did I get the
results I expected? What could I have done differently? Can I apply this way of thinking to other problems or
situations?
Strategies to Improve Pupils’ Planning Skills:
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Share and discuss assignment and task learning goals with pupils.
Support pupils to set personal goals for the task/scheme of learning:
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Provide scaffolding for pupils to plan their approach and learning strategies for
completing the assignment/task:
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Share grading criteria with pupils and support
them in applying the criteria you will use on
their work:
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Bloom’s Taxonomy is especially useful as it is already differentiated according to
levels of complexity. Share Bloom’s taxonomy with pupils; especially as part of
lesson objectives and make them aware of the level of thinking skill you are
expecting from them at each grade/level:
Creating
Evaluating
Analysing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
Strategies to Improve Pupils’ Monitoring & Evaluation Skills:

Use Bloom’s taxonomy to support pupils to reflect against what they are learning
and the progress they are making – build this in as mini-plenaries throughout the
lesson and plenaries at the end of the lesson:
A Taxonomy of
Reflection
Creating
Evaluating
Analysing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
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Creating: What should I do next?
Evaluating: How well did I do?
Analysing: Do I see any patterns
in what I did?
Applying: Where could I use this
again?
Understanding: What was
important about it?
Remembering: What did I do?
Provide thinking stems for pupils to reflect upon what
they are learning and to reflect upon what they are
thinking about what they are reading:
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Support pupils to reflect upon assignment and task learning goals – did they achieve
the goals they set themselves?
Support pupils to self and peer assess completed work against the grading criteria
you will use to assess their work.
Provide scaffolding for pupils to reflect on the learning process and identify changes
to be made for next time:
Example 1: Scaffolded Learning Reflection
Learning Reflection
Subject
Date:
Content
Grade
Feeling
I already knew:
__________________________________________________________________
My new learning was:
__________________________________________________________________
It helped me learn when:
__________________________________________________________________
I struggled with:
__________________________________________________________________
I was successful when:
___________________________________________________________________
Next I need to:
___________________________________________________________________
To get to the next level I need to:__________________________________________________________________
To help me learn I need to:
___________________________________________________________________
Things that may have helped you learn:
Adult
Videos
Games
Team or pair work
Instructions
Coaching
Example 2: Learning Reflection Completed by Pupil
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Example 3: A Thought Chain
Example 4: A Gallery Walk
1. Reflecting on Learning – Thinking about
Thinking
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Approach 2 - Assessment for Learning and Formative
Feedback
Metacognitive skills are also an important aspect of formative assessment and Assessment
for Learning. In order to maximise the benefits of learning experiences, pupils need to be
able to evaluate their own performance and identify steps that they can take to help them
to improve. Metacognitive skills are key in supporting a pupil’s own monitoring and
evaluation of their work, in choosing where to improve and what to do to reach their
targets.
Effective Marking & Feedback
Prioritising class time for reflection and deciding on next steps is important and
demonstrates to pupils the value of revisiting their work. Pose questions in your marking
that develop higher order thinking skills and extend pupils’ knowledge and understanding.
Use open ended questions which extend pupils thinking rather than just a discrete response;
Why do you think this? What do you think happens next? What thinking skills have you used
here? Use questions in the form of thinking stems to scaffold responses: How does this
make you feel? What will you do differently next time?
2. Problem Solving
Original work
Feedback from
teacher
Improvements
made by
student
You may wish to consider not giving grades for some exercises or tests. Instead get pupils to
reflect on their performance and plan how they will approach the next task.
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Student Response Systems
 Use pupil response systems like Active Expression, in combination with
discussion and peer assessment, to help pupils gauge their understanding
throughout a lesson in relation to that of their classmates. Use this
feedback as a teacher to gauge whether to recap or move on to next
part of lesson. Consolidate learning and understanding before introducing
new knowledge.
Effective Questioning
 Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to challenge pupils to write their own questions to pose to
the class. They should aim to devise at least one question per level of the taxonomy.
In small groups, the questions can be posed, with the ‘asker’ leading discussion and
specifying the criteria that satisfies the answer they seek.
 Link questioning to Bloom’s taxonomy to ensure progressive questioning and the use
of higher order thinking skills by pupils….remember stretch and challenge pupils’
thinking:
Remembering:
Asking questions that require students only to recognise or recall information evokes the
lowest level of cognitive processing. Remembering, however, is critical for meaningful
learning and problem-solving. We must be familiar with the factual aspects of any topic or
problem if we are to think about it in a more complex way. Indeed, it is familiarity with “the
basics” that allows us to move beyond them and combine ideas or arguments in new and
creative ways.
Examples of questions at this level might include:
Or slightly more difficult:
What is the chemical formula of water?
What happened when?....
Name the three basic categories of rocks?
Give an account of…..
Who was the first president of America?
Write a summary of…..
Understanding:
Moving up to the second rung of the taxonomy, understanding requires students to move
beyond merely recalling a piece of information in order to connect it new knowledge and
link it to prior learning and experiences. Cognitive processes at this level include classifying,
inferring, comparing and explaining. More able pupils can be pushed further to examine
scenarios from other perspectives, reorder information, and consider the consequences of
any given outcome.
Examples:
Describe how adaptations to the lungs during aerobic training improve an athlete’s aerobic
endurance.
Applying:
Applying knowledge entails using it in new contexts, transferring what has been learned in
one topic, situation or problem to a new one. The use of principles or rules from one area
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employed on a new task or the demonstration of the correct usage of a procedure
constitutes the application level of the taxonomy.
Examples:
Carry out a titration to determine…
Show the importance of form, language, tone and theme in the poetry of….
Factorise (5x2 –20x – 25)
Analysing:
Analysing involves breaking down a whole idea into parts, and seeing the relationships and
patterns between each part. We encourage pupils to fit all the information on a topic
together like jigsaw pieces and see the big picture. When we ask students to analyse
information we look for them to:
 Distinguish fact from opinion
 Connect conclusions with supportive statements
 Decide which information is relevant and which can be ignored
 “Read between the lines” to identify assumptions that may be unstated.
 Find evidence to support a viewpoint
 Distinguish dominant from subordinate themes or ideas
Examples:
Winston Churchill played a vital role in World War 2. Discuss.
What evidence is there that Portia from Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was wise
beyond her years?
Evaluating:
Once information has been understood in context and analysed for relationships and
sequences, it can be evaluated. Evaluation involves making a judgement after exploring a
hypothesis and examining the evidence.
Examples:
Evaluate the consequences of a country’s changing population on the social, financial and
cultural life of the country.
Creating:
The final part of the cognitive process challenges pupils to put together disparate ideas to
form a new whole. At this level students are expected to draw upon information and ideas
from many sources to create a novel resource, solution to a problem or object.
Examples:
Design a new experiment to examine sensitivity to touch.
Create a campaign to encourage teenagers to reduce their Carbon Footprint.
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Approach 3: Problem Solving & Team Work
Being able to solve different problems in different ways and being able to work alone or
as part of a team are important metacognitive skills for pupils to master. Pupils need to
be taught different ways to solve problems; trial and error or more systematic
approaches, and need to be able to understand how working in teams can help or
hinder the problem solving process. This is especially important given the greater
emphasis on problem solving in some of the revised GCSEs.
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Incorporate regular problem solving units and activities in to your schemes of
work and lessons.
Ask pupils to identify the skills they need to be good problem solvers; they to be
be able to understand the information given, apply knowledge and experience
from previous similar problems, work carefully, be persistent, don’t give up,
communicate.
Use relevant Apps and online games that will engage them in the problem
solving process.
Explain and model to pupils what it means to work systematically, organize
information, priorities information, check the answer against set criteria, how to
use trial and error methods….teach them the skills!
Encourage them to think about their prior learning; what have they done
previously that will help them with this task? What situation have I been in
before like this and what did I do then?
Utilise short team problem solving activities – make them practical to engage
through kinaesthetic learning. Discuss with them what makes a good team
player, agree ground rules for team/group work.
Ask them to reflect on their thinking; why did I make those decisions? why did I
do it that way?
You are a farmer in the local area and your sheep have escaped from their field. They are scared and disorientated. You need to get them back into
their field as quickly as possible, before they cause serious harm to themselves. To make the situation worse it is 2am in the morning and the sheep
can’t see anything and the battery on your torch has just run out.
You can’t touch the sheep as this will cause distress, they also don’t understand spoken instructions. So you must get them back to the field using
only the equipment provided.
Equipment
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Blindfolds for the “sheep” and a whistle
Your task
11 a farmer, the rest of the group are to put the blindfolds on and act as “sheep.” The farmer must navigate theBAM
Nominate
sheepJanuary
back to the2015
field before
the time is up. Remember the sheep don’t understand spoken instructions and touching them will cause distress.
Think how best to solve this problem using the equipment provided.
Approach 4: Study Skills and Memorisation
Techniques
Pupils need to be taught how to memorise and recall key information and techniques;
especially for linear and end of year examinations. Here are a few strategies to try:
Recalling and Connecting Prior Learning
K-W-L stands for Know, Want to know, have Learned. A K-W-L chart is a graphic organiser
that requires pupils to activate their prior knowledge about a topic, think about the topic in
advance of class work to decide what information they need to know, and finally
encourages them to record their progress in learning and finding out.
Step 1 – What I know
When you introduce a new topic to the class, the first step is to get them to come up with as
many things that they already know about the topic as possible. This can be done as a whole
class brainstorm, as a think-pair-share activity, or individually
Step 2 – What I want to know
This step involves building upon the information that is already known, and guidance that
may come from the title of the lesson, or the title of a book chapter that corresponds to it,
hunches that the pupil may have or particular pockets of interest. Pupils must compile a list
of questions that reflect “what they want to know” about a topic.
Step 3 – What I have learned
At this step, pupils record the answers to the questions that they posed at step 2. This
provides a record of progress and also an organisational framework for the learning.
Memorisation Techniques
Teaching pupils memory techniques can be really useful; especially for end of year exams.
Try the following:
 Have regular spelling tests of technical and subject specific vocabulary.
 Carry out memory tests of random objects and ask pupils to recall as many as
possible.
 Use mnemonics to help pupils remember key information e.g. Memorise this phrase
to learn the first 10 elements of the periodic table ‘Happy Henry Likes Beer But Could
Not Obtain Four Nuts’.
 Use acronyms too e.g. FITT (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type).
 Teach pupils to use a memory technique called the ‘Method of Loci’ – see below.
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Example Method of Loci Lesson Structure
Pupils are going to be learning a memory strategy called the Method of Loci. This is also called the Memory
Palace and is a mnemonic device introduced in ancient Rome and Greece. It uses visualisation and engages
the parts of the brain that relate to spatial awareness. A list of items to be remembered are imagined in
different locations within a familiar building (e.g. school or home).
Start by asking the children to close their eyes and imagine taking a tour of their home starting at the front
door. Give them a minute to ‘walk through’ their homes in their heads. Then give each child one minute to
describe the tour to their partner. Explain that the children will be set a memory challenge, and that this
tour of their home is going to help them. Tell them that they must learn the names of nine scientists and
their discoveries and they will be tested in one week’s time. Explain that they are going to imagine these
men and women in nine separate locations in their home. However, there might be two or three people in
one room.
Ask the children to write down their nine different locations. For instance, the hallway, the sitting room,
bathroom, kitchen, parents’ bedroom etc. Give every child a sheet with pictures of all the people with their
names and discoveries clearly labelled. Some of the discoveries or inventions may require further
explanation.
● Marie Curie (X-ray)
● Fleming (penicillin)
● Isaac Newton (gravity)
● Edison (light bulb)
● Alexander Graham Bell (telephone)
● Henry Cavendish (hydrogen)
● Isambard Kingdom Brunel (built the first iron bridge)
● Joseph Paxton (Crystal Palace)
● John Logie Baird (TV)
Ask the children to place a different person in each location in their memory palace. To help the pupils
learn the names of these people and their inventions or discoveries, there will also be a visual ‘hook’ or
association between the two and these need to be explained. The children must look at the picture,
imagine them in the location in their house, and also visualise them performing their unique action. For
example:
● Marie Curie is in the kitchen helping to 'cure' people by x-raying them
● Thomas Edison is in the sitting room 'edding’ a lightbulb.
● Fleming is in the bathroom coughing up phlegm because he’s ill and needs an antibiotic – penicillin
● Isaac Newton has a sack of newts and is taking them out and dropping them on the floor and wondering
why they fall downwards
● Bell – a bell is ringing and it’s the telephone
● Brunel is brewing tea in a big iron pot
● John Logie Baird is watching Yogi Bear on television
● Paxton ‘packs tonnes’ of glass for Crystal Palace
● Cavendish is looking at a dish of burning hydrogen
Ask the children to take the tour of their memory palace, visualising the people. Tell the children that they
will be given opportunities during the week to reinforce these memories.
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Summary: Three Steps for Teaching Metacognition
Remind students that their ability to learn involves skills that can
be continuously improved upon and that they are responsonsible
for their own learning.
1
2
3
Stress the importance of goal setting, monitoring and
evaluation strategies and allow them to select the appropriate
learning strategies for tasks set.
Provide opportunities for pupils to practise skills to reflect on their
learning, monitor their learning and adapt as necessary.
PLEASE NOTE:
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THE CONTENT OF THIS BOOKLET WILL BE FOLLOWOED UP BY A SERIES OF CPD
SESSIONS FOR STAFF.
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COPIES OF EXAMPLE DOCUMENTS INCLUDED IN THIS BOOKLET CAN BE FOUND ON
THE SCHOOL NETWORK: TSHARE; WHOLE SCHOOL INTERVENTION;
METACOGNITION.
BAM January 2015