Education 2.0 & 3.0

Being a man, I'm very poor at reflection, but by breaking it into metacognitive practices helped me think about my thinking. 

To facilitate these activities, she also offers three useful tables:

Metacognition is one of the hardest aspects of student's learning to get from them. Children find it difficult to communicate about their thinking and teacher's find it difficult to teach these skills. This is well worth a read to help develop our own understanding of metacognition. 

Metacognition is awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. The ability to analyze one’s own thoughts that lead to statements like “I don’t know how to do this” and “I can’t do this” allows for students to take better control of the learning and to begin to apply the skills and knowledge they have to the situation. Often times, if we begin to ask the student questions about what he/she does know how to do, what skills he/she has that can be applied, the student is then able to begin to attend to the work. However, what has often happened in the past, is that the student has been unsuccessful in attempting to do something new, gotten a grade that felt “bad” and it has created a sense of anxiousness about being “bad” again and so it is easier to not try it than to be “bad”.

Carol Dweck’s concept of “Not Yet” has helped many educators rethink grading and the concept of grades as either “good” or “bad”. The power of the concept of not yet allows a student to be on a continuum to achieving “good” (learning) without the feeling of being “bad” (I failed again). The idea of allowing for mastery learning teaches students metacognition. Dweck’s focus is on rewarding the process of learning more than the learning itself which allows students to develop metacognition through repeated successful learning experiences.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=reflection

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Psychology

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Metacognition

http://globaleducationandsocialmedia.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/pkm-personal-professional-knowledge-management/

Thinking about Thinking Optimizes Learning

Most teachers know that if students reflect on how they learn, they become better learners. For example, some students may think and process information best in a quiet library; others may focus better surrounded by familiar noise or music. Learning strategies that work for math may be different from those applied in the study of a foreign language. For some, it takes more time to understand biology than chemistry. With greater awareness of how they acquire knowledge, students learn to regulate their behavior to optimize learning. They begin to see how their strengths and weaknesses affect how they perform. The ability to think about one’s thinking is what neuroscientists call metacognition. As students’ metacognitive abilities increase, research suggests they also achieve at higher levels.

Metacognition plays an important role in all learning and life experiences. Beyond academic learning, when students gain awareness of their own mental states, they begin to answer important questions: How do I live a happy life? How do I become a respected human being? How do I feel good about myself? Through these reflections, they also begin to understand other people’s perspectives.  

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=reflection

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Psychology

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Metacognition

Teaching learners to think about their own "thinking" can be one of the most empowering tools. When learners engage in reflective thinking it develops a growth rather than a fixed mindset.

How can check lists help students? Below are a few of the ways suggested by this post. Click through to read all of them.

* A task-based checklists allow students to follow steps providing guidance to successful completion of complex tasks.

* Checklists help with metacognition. They help students "become aware of their learning process."

The post also provides five resources to use checklists in your course.

* Wunderlist

* List Weaver

* Pinterest

* TeacherVision.com

* ReadWriteThink.org

Remember that your check lists may change as students use them...and to ask students for their feedback as they may have ideas that you have not considered.

Why don't we get our students into the habit of making a list?