Teaching Students to be Learners

Cartoon © of Jim Warren. Courtesy of ImageLoop.com

In all the ways that don't matter, I am a fantastic student.  I do all the assignments and get good grades.  I have become subject to being standardized in our education system.  There's been times where I felt like it was more important for me to pick the right answer (as an adult sees it) then venture to explore or provide a better answer, or even the true answer.  I have been molded into a good student, but not a good thinker.  I believe this is why I personally struggled with picking a career.  I never got the chance to explore what actually interested me.  I just did what my teachers, parents, and other adults told me to do.  I took lots of math classes because I had to and I read below my reading level because that was the whole class' level and the teacher couldn't just give me something higher to read.  I always could realistically tell myself, in a metamemory and metacomprehension fashion, okay this is what I know, this is what I have to work on.  It was not until college I was taught to be a critical thinker.  Before then, I always just accepted everything and anything presented to me.  Maybe it was just the teenage rebel in me, but I really learned how to question things around me, and I think this really was the key factor that turned me onto science.  In his article, “What is Metacognition,” Michael Martinez (2003) identifies metacognition as a vital tool in functioning that they categorize as being metamemory and metacomprehension, problem solving, and critical thinking (judging whether an idea makes sense).  For the sake of simplicity, I will define these terms very shortly, but my definitions to not suffice for how deep and large these fields really are.  Metamemory can be viewed as knowing if you know something or not, while metacomprehension is realizing how well or poorly you understand something.  Problem solving is considering many weighted challenges and paths, all with a goal in mind.  Critical thinking can be judging an idea for quality.  Metacognition is not always conscious- it can be naturally automatic for us to do.  When we become really good at a type of metacognition, or even just one type of action (such as driving a familiar route) the metacognition becomes automatic, which leaves room for working memory.  The author also connect the importance of using metacognition in an educational setting as a tool to assist student’s learning.  For example, during apprenticeships (so disciple specific classes) students should be put in situations where they can practice metacognition.  The teachers and students should also explicitly discuss metacognition and the ability to grow and develop the ability to improve it through practice and goal setting.  Teachers can also think out loud to model metacognition to their students (in order to show them how they derived a thought or point) and students can also model out externally in order to consciously develop their skills, be able to be assessed by the teacher, and learn from each other.  Metacognition should also be influenced by emotion and motivation because they will drive students to want to develop their metacognitive abilities in their goal of being successful.  The TED Talks video posted below, talks about quite the opposite occurring.  Dr. Cabrera, and Ivy League professor, lectures on how even though he has the best and the brightest students from our education system, they don't know how to critically think.  They lack metacognitive skills and have mainly just become successful because they got really good at school.  They're essentially able to memorize things, take tests, and follow rules and deadlines.  This leads to a lack of preparation of the student's for the real world because they cannot critically think and analyze.  They have become thoughtless and automatic.  Regardless of their success, these students struggle with life outside of school because they lack the skills needed to approach new situations and challenges.  Dr. Cabrera notes that we are putting too much pressure with curriculum and doing the thinking for our students, which does not benefit them.  He also discusses ways of increasing metacognition such as teaching distinction, relationships, taking perspectives, and systems.  Students are not to only look for the right answers, but really think about how to consciously and actively think about the journey to solving an issue or reaching a goal.  This also relates to the cartoon above because of how we are doing all the thinking for our students, and making them into robots who lack metacognitive.  We cannot measure student's success on just their performance, unless we're asking them to solve problems that allow them cognitively think and challenge their conceptions.  We need to assess their ability to think, connect, and derive in order to reach goals.

In 2003, Schoenbach, Braunger, Greenleaf, and Litman wrote the article, “Apprenticing Adolescents to Reading in Subject-Area Classrooms,” which holds much of the similar ideas and concepts as their previously discussed article.  This article stresses the importance of not teaching reading separately, but incorporating it into subject-specific classes.  This not only provides students with applicable context, but teachers them how to specifically read for a type of subject, whether it be research work in a science class or a fiction novel in a literature class.  The students not only become better readers through this systematic, conscious way of teaching how to read, but become better learners of the subject at hand.  Reading apprenticeship works because it makes the teacher’s reading process and knowledge visible to the students and the student’s reading process, strategy, and knowledge visible to the teacher.  It basically makes visible why we read the way we do and how to read skillfully for comprehension.  Teachers can teach this through social inquiry by prompting the students through dialogue to ask  and answer questions, personalizing reading to show students they are an active agent in their learning and lives, providing comprehension tool kits (thinking out loud, talking to the text, etc.) and using knowledge building (scaffolding).  Social inquiry and building upon knowledge was something we worked on ourselves in class when doing the gallery walk activity because it forced us to think out loud in small groups and challenge each other to provide answers to questions that were very similar, but asking for different things.  The questions prompted us to externalize our thinking process.  The think-pair-share activity also did this because we not only let our claims be known to our partners, but reasoned our beliefs using connections and examples.  Teaching students how to read by guiding them on how to make connections, how to interpret information, and how to critically think will become a tool that will help them in their classes overall.  While metacognition is consciously thinking about what one is thinking, reading apprenticeship is similar in that it is consciously and externally representing how and why you are reading the way you are.  Both make visible the necessary tools we use to get from point A to point B and allow for teachers to help students learn how to make that journey.  Making students conscious of their thinking and reading process would be beneficial to literacy because it encourages the student’s comprehension of text, and takes away from the focus of the baggage and preconceptions, such as literacy is only about personal pronouns, adverbs, and clauses.  My personal favorite technique to facilitate reading comprehension (and take the pressure off literacy baggage) is using graphic organizers.  I've included some examples of graphical organizers below.  They allow students to visually sort new information from their reading as they go along into familiar categories.  It also always them to visualize connections and think of things in new ways.  Graphic organizers also allow students to review concepts and step back and look at the connections as a whole.  They can also be used to "help the writer to present his or her ideas in an effective and persuasive manners, resulting in a focused and coherent text." (Bell, 2009)  So not only can students use them to understand what they're reading, but be able to demonstrate the connections they are making to others.  It also helps them to focus on what is important, and leave out the "fluff" material.

Bell, 2009

In our class, we discussed how it is vital to work with complex text using appropriate cognitive/grade level standards.  For example, in regards to the type of text for lower grades, it is usually narrative focused and explicit, while for upper grades it is informational focused and implicit or symbolic.  Even the vocabulary density is different between the two: using high-frequency, general conversational words for lower grades and low-frequency, disciplinary specific words for higher grades.  Even the writing style becomes more complex and there is more complex, multi-level detail for higher levels.  After reading the assigned articles, I have come to realize this whole appropriate text per grade level does not matter… it should not matter!  (Going out on a limb here) Our students, when given the reading and metacognitive tools, should be able to read and comprehend anything regardless of its complexity.  Isn’t that the goal of our teaching?  Students can self-reflect on what they do or don’t understand from a text and be encouraged to use context clues, summarizing, questioning, and scaffolding to learn how to come to the answer.  Our goal is to not only teach students facts and numbers, but teach them how to learn.

References:

Bell, V. (2009, January 1). A Writing Process. Using graphic organizers. Retrieved June 17, 2014, from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/writing-process/5809

Braunger, J., Greenleaf, C., & Litman, C., Schoenbach, R. Apprenticing Adolescents to Reading in Subject-Area Classrooms. Phi Delta Kappan, 85, 133-138.

Cabrera, D. (2011, December 6). TEDxWilliamsport - Dr. Derek Cabrera - How Thinking     Works. YouTube. Retrieved June 16, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUqRTWCdXt4

Cartoon © of Jim Warren. Courtesy of ImageLoop.com

Martinez, M. What is Metacognition. Phi Delta Kappan, 87, 696-699.