Crown Wood Primary

Crown Wood
Primary School

Metacognition

We aim to create self-regulated learners who demonstrate effective learning behaviours.  Self-regulated learners are described by Zimmerman (2010) as:

“Proactive in their efforts to learn because they are aware of their strengths and limitations and because they are guided by personally set goals and task related strategies […].  These learners monitor their behaviour in terms of their goals and self-reflect on their increasing effectiveness.  This enhances their self-satisfaction and motivation to continue to improve their methods of learning.”

The learning behaviours we aim to develop in the children are:

  • Asking and answering questions;
  • Applying effort, paying attention and concentrating;
  • Able to work independently and collaboratively;
  • Responding to feedback;
  • Being prepared to take risks and to be challenged;
  • Learning from mistakes;
  • Showing determination and resilience;

Self-regulated learners require:

Cognitive Strategies
General skills like memorisation techniques or subject specific strategies (e.g. different ways of doing an addition calculation).  Cognitive strategies are fundamental to acquiring knowledge and completing learning tasks.

Metacognitive Strategies
Strategies we use to monitor or control our cognition, such as checking our memorisation technique was accurate or selecting the most appropriate cognitive strategy for a task.

Motivation
A willingness to engage their metacognitive and cognitive skills and apply them to learning.

Children are explicitly taught cognitive and metacognitive strategies in relation to specific tasks and content, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning.  They are encouraged to be active rather than passive learners.  Teachers use a seven-step model for teaching metacognitive strategies, linked to our approach to Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction:

  1. Activating prior knowledge;
  2. Explicit strategy instruction;
  3. Modelling of learned strategy;
  4. Memorisation of strategy;
  5. Guided practice;
  6. Independent practice;
  7. Structured reflection;

We use the ‘6Bs’ approach – Be Still, Backtrack, Be Brave, Bits & Bobs, Buddy, Boss – to encourage children to get ‘unstuck’ by themselves before asking an adult for help.