Teaching Metacognitive Thinking Skills
We all want our students to be metacognitive learners, yet it isn’t always easy to help children develop these valuable thinking skills within a crowded curriculum. This course explores how metacognitive thinking helps students to learn and to grow, with a focus on practical strategies to teach and support metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive control in the classroom.
Participants will develop their understanding of:
- How to explicitly teach metacognitive strategies.
- How to implicitly reinforce the use of metacognitive thinking skills.
- How to ensure students routinely employ metacognitive strategies.
- How to ensure students use these skills confidently and flexibly across a range of learning tasks.
- Strategies to evaluate students comprehension of, and use of, metacognitive thinking.
Course Content
Lesson One: Introduction to Metacognition
This introductory lesson provides a broad overview of metacognition and the six sub-components of metacognitive thinking skills.
Lesson Two: Assessing Students’ Metacognitive Skills
This lesson provides a synopsis of why and how we assess students’ metacognitive thinking skills. Examples of both formal and informal methods of data collection and assessment are discussed, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
Lesson Three: Teaching Metacognitive Skills – What, How and When
In exploring ‘What’ we teach, the importance of teaching all six sub-components of metacognition is emphasised. The ‘How’ of metacognitive skills instruction is a detailed explanation of evidence-based approaches to instruction, focusing on the Self-Regulated Strategy Development model. Finally, the ‘When’ of teaching metacognitive skills discusses the advantages of starting thinking skills instruction early (i.e. from the first year of school) while highlighting some potential problems teachers should be aware of with young children or inexperienced learners.
Lesson Four: Strategies and Skills
The focus of Lesson 4 is assisting teachers to develop their own approach and repertoire of strategies to suit their own teaching context.
Lesson Five: Tools for Teaching and Assessment
Two enormously helpful tools in metacognitive skills instruction are Strategy Evaluation Matrices and Rubrics. This Lesson explores how to create your own Strategy Evaluation Matrices (SEM) and rubrics for classroom use.
Lesson Six: Resources
The resources page has links to a variety of resources to assist in ongoing professional learning related to this topic. This is to allow individual teachers to select areas of personal interest for further investigation.
Course Information
Certified for 6 hours of professional learning
Available now on demand. This course is self paced and access does not expire.
Recognised by VIT, TRBSA, TRBWA, TRBNT, QCT and TRBT as addressing APST 1.2, 1.5, 2.2, 2.5, 3.1, 3.3, 5.1, 5.2
Suitable for: classroom teachers P-12, teacher aides/learning support, casual teachers, specialist teachers, school leaders, tertiary and adult educators and pre-service teachers
Cost:
Teacher: $179
Casual teachers: $69
Group or whole school <50 teachers: $1890
Group or whole school >50 teachers: $2590
How to Enrol
Once you have completed this form, you will be able to download a PDF invoice which you can then forward to your school. You will also have the opportunity to set up your online account with a username and password.
If you would like to begin immediately, just have your school administration (e.g. Principal or Office Manager) send us an email confirming they have approved your enrolment and we’ll set you up straight away.
Assistance and Information
If you would like more information about this course or how to enrol, our team is ready to assist you.