Prior to my working at Connecticut College, I worked at another college in a program specifically for students with learning disabilities, ADHD, and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Most of these individuals had a track record of struggling to learn, and the goal for those of us who taught and advised the students was to teach these students how to learn so that they could be successful in college. In addition to using explicit instruction methods and incorporating a high level of executive function support and development, we incorporated how to use metacognition into our content classes.
Simply put, metacognition is thinking about your thinking for the purpose of improving your learning. This second part is critical – it’s not merely a pondering, philosophical exercise (no offense to philosophers), but rather one with an explicit goal. We think about our thinking to understand it better – its strengths and weaknesses – so that we can learn better. We can teach students how to do that. Equally important, educators can use it to evaluate and improve their teaching.
We think of our highest performing students as exceptionally smart, intelligent, bright. The strength they really share is being metacognitive about their learning. They may not know the term, or have ever consciously thought about what they are doing to be successful, but they are being metacognitive nonetheless. It comes innately for some students – or at least they develop the ability fairly independently – while for many others, its development needs the guidance and support of others.
Let’s look at metacognition in a little more detail. Metacognition involves constant monitoring of determining the task hand, the best way to approach it, how you’re doing, should you be doing something different. Then reflecting on the entire process, and when necessary, cycling through again with any needed adjustments. This requires understanding oneself as a learner, knowing options of strategies to use, determining which ones to use and when, evaluating whether they’re being effective or whether a different strategy is needed. It’s being able to gauge when you understand something and when you don’t, and if it’s the latter, then being able to figure out what to do to aid comprehension. It’s knowing when the process you’re using to monitor your learning is effective and being able to adapt your monitoring if it’s not.
Different analogies can be used with students to help explain this concept of metacognition. For some, what is described in the paragraph above reminds them of seeing yourself in a mirror, looking at yourself in a reflection in a mirror, looking at yourself in a reflection in a mirror and so on. Others describe it as “driving your brain” or “dissecting your learning.” And one of my favorites, “doing therapy on your learning” – you can’t just take things as how they appear on the surface, but really break things down to see and understand what’s really going on, how are you helping or hurting yourself, what should you be doing differently.
Having a growth mindset, the belief that the ability to learn can be increased and challenges overcome with effort, goes hand in hand with being metacognitive. After all, using metacognition focuses on the process being used, the journey to success, not just the end goal. A metacognitive approach shows that hard work does pay off. And with a growth mindset, one has the patience and resilience to work toward that payoff – what Carol Dweck, Stanford psychologist and growth mindset guru, describes as “the power of ‘yet’.” I can’t do it . . . yet.
During Camp Teach & Learn at the end of May, there will be a workshop on using metacognition to teach and teaching metacognition as well as a workshop on developing a growth mindset in your students.
Last week we looked at factors that influence students’ motivation to learn. This week we’ll focus on two of those – motivation is increased when students perceive personal value in a learning goal and when they perceive a reasonable likelihood of being successful in achieving the goal. Much of this is applicable in the classroom context, but some suggestions may be even more appropriate to utilize in interactions with students that take place outside the classroom.
As stated in last week’s blog, Universal Design principles are intended to make a product, environment, or service accessible to all individuals – with a wide range of characteristics – by removing barriers proactively. The barriers can be in architectural design, as was the first area where Universal Design was applied, but also in education. The goal of Universal Design in education is to “…maximize the learning of students with a wide range of characteristics by applying UD principles to all aspects of instruction (e.g., delivery methods, physical spaces, information resources, technology, personal interactions, assessments).”
Differentiated instruction requires a teacher to vary his or her approach to each student by customizing content, teaching techniques, learning strategies, and assessment tools. In order to do this, instructors need to identify the learning outcomes they want students to achieve, must understand how each student learns best, and then design differentiated instructional approaches and assessments. If they’ve tried something that doesn’t work, they go through the process again to adjust and adapt the learning experience for the student. Sounds like a lot of work? It is (not to mention adding classroom management and developing social skills into the mix) . . . thank your K-12 teachers!
A student with the accommodation of “access to notes” might have qualified for the accommodation due to a visual or hearing impairment, an attentional issue, a processing difficulty, or a struggle with working memory. There are different ways of providing this access depending upon the individual’s functional limitations, therefore an Accommodation Memo might list “use of a recording device” or “access to a peer note taker.” There are also variations that include “copy of teacher notes” or “copy of PowerPoint slides in advance.”
This can be especially helpful in classes with mathematical problems where it may be hard for students to accurately or quickly copy what the teacher is writing on the board, and a recording of such may not be very useful when the primary intake is visual. A second is to have a dedicated class note taker (class members can take turns) who posts his or her notes on Moodle for the rest of the class to review and compare to their own notes. A third is to record the class – audio or video – and post the recording on Moodle. And finally, a simple method is to allow students to take a picture of the board with their phones if you’ve written a lot of information, drawn a diagram or chart, or solved a math problem that may be hard to recreate in their notes.
Some faculty members worry that recordings stifle class discussions or may be misused. First and foremost, §504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 doesn’t mention many specific accommodations, but it does explicitly state “use of tape recorder” as an example of providing access when necessary for an individual with a disability. So, like it not, it’s one of the few things that the law explicitly includes. Secondly, if there is a sensitive topic being discussed, students who are recording can be told to stop – as long as students taking written notes are told not to take notes at that time (remember, it’s about equal access, so if no students can take notes, then students with a note taking accommodation don’t get to either). Thirdly, our 
It’s not what you think. This is not about teaching and learning through playing World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. Rather, this model uses teaching strategies based on the design-concepts of video games and research on how the brain responds during video games. This week will introduce the concepts, and next week we’ll make the connection to applying this to the classroom.
Difficulties associated with learning disabilities can include trouble distinguishing the big picture from supporting details, as well as understanding abstract concepts.
Wait time is the window between a teacher’s asking a question and expecting a student to respond. What usually happens when a student doesn’t respond quickly? The teacher either expands upon the question, provides an answer, or cold calls on someone else. Teachers typically wait only up to one second after asking a question before moving on to one of these options. When students do respond that quickly after the question, the answer tends to be a superficial response.
