Metacognition Skills in the Kindergarten Curriculum Bobbie Bien Classroom Teacher

1. Metacognition Skills in the Kindergarten Curriculum Bobbie BienClassroom Teacher

2. Longfellow Elementary SchoolPrincipal, Cathy NowackAssistant Principal, Molly KettererKindergarten TeamMichele DorseyDebi HochkeppelKate NicolBobbie BienPriscilla AndachterBertha RobinsonDebbie Legowski

3. Longfellow Elementary School Staff Development Presentation November 3, 2008 • Identify Metcognition skills • Discover ways you can use them in your classroom

4. Talk with a person near you about what metacognition means. How can we apply this concept to all students?

5. Comparison • Labeling • Looking Carefully • Role taking • Precise & Accurate • Sequencing Self-Regulation • “If learning is making sense of experience, and thinking is how we learn, then improving children’s thinking will help them make more sense of learning and of life.” • Robert Fisher, Teaching Thinking and Creativity

6. MetacognitionThinking About Thinking KNOWING HOW TO LEARN, and knowing which strategies work best, are valuable skills that differentiate expert learners from novice learners. Metacognition, or awareness of the process of learning, is a critical ingredient to successful learning. Metacognition is an important concept in cognitive theory. It consists of two basic processes occurring simultaneously: monitoring your progress as you learn, and making changes and adapting your strategies if you perceive you are not doing so well. (Winn, W. & Snyder, D., 1998) It's about self-reflection, self-responsibility and initiative, as well as goal setting and time management. "Metacognitive skills include taking conscious control of learning, planning and selecting strategies, monitoring the progress of learning, correcting errors, analyzing the effectiveness of learning strategies, and changing learning behaviors and strategies when necessary." (Ridley, D.S., Schutz, P.A., Glanz, R.S. & Weinstein, C.E., 1992)

7. MetacognitionThinking About Thinking What is metacognition? Metacognition is a learned way of thinking and applying this process systematically and effectively to the learning of particular bodies of knowledge. Why is it beneficial for young children? In order to learn more effectively, children need to acquire thinking strategies that enhance or modify their cognitive abilities. Adult-child interactions, in which the adult mediates a child’s new learning experiences, help students gain more from the content and develop automatic responding in a broad base of thinking processes.

8. MetacognitionThinking About Thinking • What is the Metacognition Focus? • A metacognition focus is the systematic approach that explicitly teaches cognitive strategies. The ongoing focus addresses specific thinking processes that are taught, learned, and applied across the curriculum. Teachers plan lessons that intentionally include meaningful daily experiences and adult-child interactions to promote the use of metacognition strategies. Adult-child interactions involve: • The child learning behavior regulation through teacher modeling, direct instruction, and role-taking for the purpose of optimal learning. • Purposeful planning of mediated learning experiences • The child experiencing a natural synthesis of mind and body as explorer and creator of knowledge via active participation in the learning process. • The mediational teaching style with direct instruction in the content • The teacher guiding the child to learning goals through process-oriented questioning in a mediated learning experience • The teacher giving feedback to steer, extend, and commend the learner’s use of appropriate, and therefore, helpful learned thought processes.

9. MetacognitionThinking About Thinking • What happens in a metacognition classroom? • The metacognition classroom is one in which the mediational teaching style and the mediated learning experiences are key to improved learning across the curriculum. • The mediational teaching style is characterized by: • The teacher asking many process questions o help children focus on their thinking and explain their thought processes. • The teacher facilitating the interaction between the child and the learning experience. • The teacher continually seeking opportunities to maximize the children’s learning through generalizing the thinking strategies or cognitive functions • The teacher demonstrating how to generalize the cognitive strategies beyond what the children are working on at the moment • The class bridging learned cognitive functions between home, school and the community • The teacher managing the mediated learning experience

10. Metacognitionin Kindergarten Goal: The student will demonstrate understanding and use knowledge, skills, strategies, and behaviors for high-level thinking and problem solving.

11. What are cognitive functions? Cognitive functions are combinations of native ability, habits, attitude toward learning, motives and strategies. Cognitive functions are the thinking processes used to deepen and extend students’ understanding of the content areas and are used to direct their thinking and performance. Students apply the cognitive processing across the curriculum and in other authentic learning situations.

12. The learned thought processes for thinking about thinking include: Self-regulation Looking carefully Comparison Precision and accuracy Role taking Sequencing Labeling

13. Self-Regulation The control of behaviors of mind and body for improving the effectiveness of thinking, learning, problem solving and social processes. This self-control helps students to focus, plan, manage, organize, direct, order, and sequence their behavior. A student’s behavior is initially controlled by external stimuli. The goal is to guide the students in the development of regulating behavior independent of adults and in using internal stimuli.

14. Self-Regulation • Objective – The student will be able to self-regulate by: • Identifying and adhering to the boundaries of one’s body for gross and fine motor activities. • Recognizing expected behaviors and deliberately planning, managing, and directing one’s physical and mental actions accordingly. • Using rules to manage mental and physical behavior

15. Looking Carefully Planning and organizing the visual search by attending to defining characteristics , gathering clear and complete information, and being precise and accurate. The goal is to enable the children to deliberately attend to detail in all facets of their world.

16. Look Carefully • The student will be able to look carefully by: • Using systematic searches to define details. • Collecting clear and concise information to delineate distinguishing characteristics. • Applying precise and accurate information for thinking and articulating. • Using selective attention to relevant clues for identifying unique traits.

17. Comparison The scrutinizing of two or more objects, events, or persons to define similarities and/or differences. The goal is to enable children, to label, and to describe the characteristics or attributes of each item and determine the relationship of items being compared.

18. Comparison • Objective: The student will be able to compare by: • Using systematic searches to inspect two or more objects, creatures, or events for similarities and differences. • Collecting clear, concise, and accurate information about what is being compared. • Labeling and describing features which distinguish similarities and differences. • Describing similarities and differences on multiple dimensions.

19. Precision and Accuracy • The ability to communicate with exact, clear cut, correct information. The goal is to enable children to use self-regulation, looking carefully, comparing, labeling, and gathering clear and complete information to relate findings with precise and accurate language.

20. Precision and Accuracy • The student will be able to apply precision and accuracy by: • Demonstrating control of physical movement and articulation of thoughts. • Using systematic searches to acquire precise and accurate information. • Labeling and describing particular characteristics and defining criteria about items, sequences and events, and processes. • Gathering information, applying defining criteria to it, and articulating findings about it.

21. Role Taking • The ability to view things from various physical, psychological, and social dimensions. The goal is for children to: • Physically see objects differently according to proximity or position in relationship to the object. • Psychologically perceive the attitudes and beliefs of others based on feelings and prior experiences. • Socially learn to understand the points of view of others and imagine themselves in the roles of others.

22. Role Taking • The student will be able to apply role taking by: • Seeing objects differently according to proximity or position in relationship to the object. • Perceiving the attitudes and beliefs of other based on feelings and prior experiences. • Imagining one’s self from the point of • view and in the roles of others.

23. Sequencing Making sense of the order, structure, and predictability of the world through discovering the patterns and regularities in visual, auditory, and tactual arrangements. The goal is for students to use memory, rules, and precision o detect, create, extend, and verify patterns and regularities.

24. Sequencing The student will be able to sequence by: • Developing and applying the understanding that a sequence of events can be repeated in a pattern. • Recognizing sequences and patterns in a line or in time. • Identifying and validating sequences and patterns. • Explaining the rule that regularity and repetition occur in a line or in time.

25. Labeling The deliberate naming with precision and accuracy of processes, procedures, and tasks in addition to people, professions, services, objects, locations, and events for building vocabulary and activating links for understanding. The goal is to increase children’s vocabulary knowledge and provide a frame of reference for awakening prior knowledge and for connecting new learning by: • naming the thinking processes to be applied • labeling the actions to take when following directions (where, when, how) • Using names for tasks or activities such as draw, write, read, graph.

26. Labeling The student will be able to label by: • Using vocabulary for thinking processes and actions taken to complete assignments and activities. • Applying vocabulary for describing people, professions, services, objects, locations, and events. • Recognizing and using positional terms (under, over, top, bottom, behind, next to, inside, outside) for comprehending and describing spatial relationships between and among people and objects.

27. QuestionsDo you have any red hot scorching searing sizzling smoldering questions about Metacognition in the Kindergarten Curriculum that you would like to ask?

28. Now, let’s talk about how you can integrate metacognition in your classroom.

29. Notes from Staff Development Presentation November 3, 2008

30. Thank you for coming to hear about Metacognition in the Kindergarten Classroom

31. Notes

32. MetacognitionThinking About Thinking Theories of Jean Piaget Lev Vygotsky Reuven Feurestein H. Carl Haywood