#Metacognition at Home (2)

Hi Everyone

Last time, we looked at how parents and carers can use the coming summer break, to help develop a metacognitive way of thinking in any child.

Sometimes as parents we can feel a bit stranded outside the education system, not sure of how best to support the well-being and academic progress of our offspring in school. This becomes even harder once a child enters secondary education where contact with parents can reduce, so knowing what to do at home, irrespective of what’s happening elsewhere, can be a real asset.

In the previous issue, I recommended that you focus on your child’s ability to ‘learn’ rather than worrying about specific subject areas or how to teach them. In order to be an effective learner, any student needs to be able to use metacognition in order to adjust their thinking.

The pre-frontal cortex or reasoning part of the brain need this ability to assess whether what we’re thinking in that moment, is in our own best interests, (ie; will bring the results we’re after), and if not, be ready and willing to change our mental viewpoint.

In order to think in this more flexible way, children and young people need a positive self-concept, where they believe in their own ability to learn, which is why last time we looked at ways of boosting that self-belief. In this issue we’re going to follow that up with a second factor that impacts on how well students achieve in school, and that’s their understanding of how learning works.

In order to use metacognition to change the way they’re thinking, children need to appreciate what the learning process consists of. Think about how they learn naturally pre-school, by meeting new challenges on a daily basis, engaging with them out of curiosity, getting it wrong over and over again, making mistakes, and finally practising until it all comes right. That’s when they come running to you and say; ‘look what I can do’!

Inbuilt ‘cognition’ allows children to learn in this way, without worrying about how they’re achieving the results they're getting. Once in school however, (particularly beyond the early years), students rarely get the chance to learn from their own experience in the same way. They do however need to go through the same process, just in a more conscious way, using meta-cognition.

In order to help your child develop this ability, consider the following suggestions;

Explain to them how the brain takes in information through the five senses and keeps making adjustments in order to learn! (Help them become more aware of their senses and the role they play in collecting information.)

Tell them how learning in school feels different from experiencing things for themselves, and that being ‘taught’ by someone else requires a different way of thinking. (Some children don’t adapt well to school because they don’t register the need to change; from unconsciously using and responding to all their senses in unison, to consciously separating them in order to meet changing expectations.)

Help them to appreciate the purpose of their comfort zone and the need to leave it in order to learn! (No learning happens in our safe place, but some children stay there because they don’t realise that feeling uncomfortable in the face of something new, is a natural response to be managed, not run away from.)

Model a ‘can do’ attitude towards ‘challenge’, and demonstrate excitement at the opportunity to learn from it. (Remember that children copy those around them and even young people will adapt to a different way of thinking if it makes them feel better about themselves, so let them see you ‘go for it’.)

Always show a willingness yourself to experiment and make mistakes, whilst explaining how the brain learns and adapts from these more memorable experiences! (Don’t allow your young learner get to a situation where they’re afraid of putting pen to paper, encourage trial and error, crossings out, and multiple goes at something as the natural way to learn.)

Emphasize the importance of ‘practise’ to create stronger memory traces that make learning stick! (Never use the term ‘practise makes perfect’ as that’s setting any learner up to fail, instead use the term ‘practise makes permanent’ reflecting the idea that repetition ensures secure storage in the long-term memory for easy recall.)

Next time; how to help children appreciate their own role in the learning process.

Take care till then.

Warm regards

Liz