Last spring I was part of a tutor agency that provided activities to students from 1st – 6th grade. Such agency main purpose was to give students a set of mathematical problems or English pieces of reading in order for them to have an outstanding outcome on these two subjects at school. During my tutoring sessions I had a 4th grade student named Carolina who had a difficult time keeping focus, understanding the concept, and fully interested. She preferred texting in the middle of our session or making excuses to go to the restroom. I honestly felt helpless for her, and I didn’t know what to do and how to help her raise her grades. I realized that our tutoring sessions weren’t any help for Carolina since her mom showed me her grades which got worse. I finally decided to plan my tutoring session with her ahead of time, so I can make it interesting and more effective for her to learn but in a fun way. I choose to get different colorful cards, markers, and everything that could grave attention. When our session started I used those markers and cards to show her how to solve a mathematical problem by color coding every different step of the problem. Later, I asked her to show me the mathematical process she used in a similar problem by using those colorful cards and markers. Apparently, I make her use all these fun utensils that made the learning process more fun and effective. At the end of our session, I gave Carolina a quiz regarding the content we covered, and she did make a progress. I noticed that for Carolina the use of colors at every different step actually made her learn. Maybe it was due to the strategy that I showed her and the ability for her to remember those steps by associating them with each color which I was amazed an...
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.... Such strategies vary depending on the student’s ways of study. Otherwise, if the student lacks of metacognitive skills they waste hours studying and obtaining unsatisfactory outcomes. Metacognition is linked to an elevated intellectual capacity in order for students to learn efficiently and with minor effort.
Metacognition can be complex; however, it is essential to teach at an elementary level because it’s an intellectual habit that can be obtain by the teacher’s method of teaching and the student’s consciousness of learning. Thinking about thinking is necessary in elementary level because of the awareness of the student’s thinking process. The teacher must be conscious of the different aspects of learning of each student and be able to work with them with different strategies that are the best to make their learning process more effective and interesting.
The article, “Critical Thinking? You Need Knowledge” by Diane Ravitch, discusses how in the past people have been deprived from the thinking process and abstract thinking skills. Students need to be given more retainable knowledge by their teachers to improve their critical thinking skills. (Ravitch).
Define what metacognitive or reflective writing is. What are some of the prompts or “topics” for reflective writing?
The researcher will adopt the survey on Jr. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory which originally proposed by Sperling, Howard, Miller, and Murphy. It consists of 18 statements to which participants respond by marking a Likert scale with numbers from 1 (“never”) to 5 (“always”). Average completion time is approximately twenty minutes. The Jr. MAI statements represent two component categories of metacognition, metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation. Within the knowledge component are statements of declarative knowledge (knowledge about self and strategies), procedural knowledge (knowledge about strategy use), and conditional knowledge (when and why to use strategies). The regulation component covered planning (goal setting), information
Siegler, R., & Alibali, M. (2005). Children’s Thinking Fourth Edition. Prentice Hall Inc. Upper Saddle River NJ.
His theory changed how people viewed children’s behaviors and inspired other researchers to study this field, which has increased people’s understanding of cognitive development in childhood and adolescence. More importantly, people have learned how to understand and communicate with children and adolescences based on his ideas, which greatly helps the development of education. Teachers should lead children to pay attention to the process of learning rather than the results. Children and adolescences should also be encouraged to work in individual as well as in groups. Evaluating the level of student’s cognition is also important in order to assign suitable
Some students find it challenging to figure an effective way to learn about something and unfamiliar. It has been states that students try to find the easy way to learn, but in fact, there is no such thing (Chew, 2011). Developing “effective learning habits” can cause a major impact on how much information you retain while studying (Chew, 2011). Every student has a distinctive way of learning, but “metacognition is a concept that could drastically impact everyone’s learning” (Chew, 2011). According to Dr. Stephen Chew, a cognitive psychologist, metacognition is, “a student’s awareness of their level of understanding of a topic” ( 2011). Dr. Chew descibes “accurate metacognition" as being, the key transformation between a successful student
When we were younger we were told that when we study all we have to do it look over your notes and then we will do well on the test. The only problem is that just looking over notes doesn’t mean that, that’s all that’s going to prepare you for the test. That’s where metacognition comes in. Metacognition is more than just looking over some notes to study with. It’s being to be completely involved in your thought process of what you learning. Metacognition is important because this way when you take a test you stay more relaxed and have a better idea of what’s going to be on the test. By thinking about what you think is going to be on the test and teachers helping you understand what is necessary to study you’ll be more confident and relaxed when you take the test knowing that you know what exactly you need to know. When you’re more confident and relaxed you’ll do better than if you were scared and unprepared for the test. Another reason metacognition is important because it helps with learning information that stays in your mind rather than just learning information for the test and then just forgetting it all which happens a lot in school. Lot of schools and teachers teach their students what they are going to need to know for the test, so the students just memorize the information rather than actually learning it. Metacognition helps you actually understand what
Huitt, W. (1998). Critical thinking: An overview. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved from, http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/critthnk.html
During my 12-day observation at Magnolia Elementary School I sat on two different grade level meeting, assisted with grading assessments, tutored various levels of students, observed Ms. McDonald and assisted her with reading and math lessons, and taught a social studies lesson to the class. I have truly enjoyed my time at Magnolia and have learned a lot from observing Ms. McDonald teach reading and math. However, there was no real lesson for social studies or science even through it is on her class schedule. Art is taught by _________ and the students go either one or two times a week depending on their resource schedule. Social study lessons are made up of homework sheets that the students do throughout the week. During the time of my observation the students were learning how to read a map and how to read charts with information about the temperature climates of various northern
If anything, it made me feel inadequate for not having the skill to assist her like the other children. I was able to shift the burden of responsibility from the student to myself. If every educator could step back and assess children who don’t fit the “norm”, we should ask, “Does that child not perform because he/she is unable to do so? Or does that child not perform because I’m guilty for not learning how to help that child perform?” In the instance of the Art class, if cutting is a measurable goal, I can’t fault the child for not succeeding, if I never learn how to help that child meet the objective. I know this is a minor example, but it’s a case of how children are often set up to fail when teachers do not mold their curriculums to reflect each child’s
The foundation of a classroom setting is based on theories that enhance student learning, have a positive impact on the classroom environment and may “provide valuable guidance for teachers” (Cooper, 2006, cited in Eggen and Kauchak, 2010). Even though teaching is about what a student is taught, there are certain practises that are used to get the most out of students without the student realising. Experts in the field have developed different theories that aim to provide an answer as to how and why children learn. These theories aim to help teachers understand why children think the way they do and why different children respond better to different teaching techniques. There are many differing theories but this paper will focus on three – motivational, social-cognitive and metacognition. This paper will provide information on each theory, backed up by the theorist and will explain how each has an impact in the classroom.
Unfortunately there are no quick fixes for the problems that plague the modern classrooms; there are only stopgaps and remedies which may be helpful in mitigating the problem until a more permanent solution is attained. These remedies constitute my personal teaching philosophy. One of these remedies involves instructing the students in the act of metacognition, st...
“There is a need to address the fundamental issue of how the thinking of these children can be made more effective, also a...
Teachers face with a lot of daily choice problems, such as, how classrooms and curriculums should be organized, how students' behaviors should be interpreted, how learning time can be protected, and others. Sometimes these problems seem to be so ordinary that, teacher need to solve the problem automatically. But in the teaching process there are also complicated choices about difficult problems that, if left unaddressed, often increasing. These difficult choices call for teachers to engage in sophisticated reflection (including self-reflection).
In microteaching session, our lesson is being implemented with the foundation of learning is fun, meaningful and purposeful, which is one of the pedagogical principles in teaching. Undoubtedly, lesson planning is the first step that allows teacher to prepare the activity that could develop pupils’ ability. As the newly implemented KSSR syllabus promotes, HOTS has been put under the spotlight in education field. Writing, which largely involves metacognitive thinking skills, should be promoted in order to cultivate HOTS in younger generation. Thus, teacher should diversify the varieties of activities in order to make sure that pupils’ endowment is fully cultivated and their interest in the lesson is maintained. According to Champkins (2003), the average attention span of a primary school pupil can be calculated using the rule of chronological age + I (minute). This is an approximation of the period where pupils are able to concentrate in an activity. Subsequently, teacher should make sure that the lesson is learner-centred and activities planned are engaging, appropriate and suitable for pupils to enjoy the learning process. As the target group of pupils is Year 4, we have tried to attract pupils’ attention through creating suspense and asked pupils to predict the following activity. By doing this, we hope that we will be able to arouse the curiosity of pupils on the topic. In the lesson plan, we have also included group work. According to Gorgon (2008), group work is effective in developing pupils’ initiative to think, contribute to the group, share and evaluate information as well as promoting pupils’ sense of cooperation. From this, pupils will not be only improving their communication skill, but they are also being provided with an opportunity to develop collaborative skills as a real life scenario is provided for pupils to interact with their partner and pupils in the process of