“Metacognition enables us to be successful learners,
and has been associated with intelligence.
Metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active
control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Activities such as planning how to approach a
given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward
the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature (Livingston, 1997).”
As a future teacher, this concept of “thinking about
thinking” eludes me occasionally. I can
only imagine a 9th or 10th grader hearing “a good learner
has good metacognition; they have control over cognitive process and perform
higher order thinking.” Right then, they would think they were not a good reader and they weren't a good learner, but they use metacognitive thinking without even knowing what metacognition is.
In Wednesday's class, when reading the abstract on phospholipid binding protein, I read as I normally do, I did what I normally do when I run into words or sentences I can't quite understand. To my surprise, I actually used 6 of the 10 fix-up strategies. What we as
teachers, and as lifelong learners, need to remember is that we engage in
metacognitive activities every day, usually without even realizing it, and we need to communicate this to our students. We need to be able to teach our students
about metacognition, to make them aware that they use metacognitive strategies
every day, and we need to teach them how to use new strategies.
“Apprenticing Adolescents to Reading in Subject-Area
Classrooms” focuses on an approach called Reading Apprenticeship. Through this approach, teachers realize what
complex discipline-specific reading processes they use and how they can teach
their students to use the same processes to understand content reading. Being a biology “expert”, I am used to
reading scientific papers, writing lab reports, and analyzing peer
reviews. I would be able to show my
students how I read and write this type of literature, what fix-up strategies I
use, and how I think about what I am reading.
Being able to demonstrate these processes I would hope to help my
students unravel the complex writing often found in science literature. However, never in my days in college or even
high school, did I read a book (apart from our text book) about a science
subject or write a paper that didn’t involve some sort of graph or chart. I think it is important for science teachers
to teach students how to read scientific literature, how to read and understand
graphs and charts and visuals, and how to write lab reports. But I also think it is important that students
in a science class read novels, accounts of history in the sciences, and current
newspaper and journal articles. While a
lot of the strategies I use when reading a scientific paper can also be used
when reading a book like “The Coming of Age in the Milky Way”, there are some
other strategies that may be more helpful in these contexts. I think the metacognitive bookmark we used in
class is a great tool to use with students; to help them stop and think about
what they are reading and introduce them to metacognitive thinking. Using this bookmark with all sorts of texts,
from scientific papers, to novels, to newspaper articles, and even to videos
and charts, is a great way to facilitate discussion in a classroom, to
understand where the student may be struggling, and to teach various ways of analyzing
texts as well as how to read those texts.
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| Various Reading Strategy Bookmarks |
Resources:
Livingston, Jennifer A. (1997). Metacognition: An Overview. Retrieved from
http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/metacog.htm.
Images:
http://static.wixstatic.com/media/481656_bafdb2ed7f0842a89c2ad7ca7272da55.jpg_srz_960_720_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/cb/e3/69/cbe3691b1dc5ead00c90c2cde5b480b7.jpg
http://readingapprenticeship.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/think-aloud-bookmarks-checklist2.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/03/7a/ce/037ace9d128a263dffb5705fe3b2844f.jpg
I agree that metacognition bookmarks can be an excellent resource to students! I plan on using them when my students begin to read academic texts. You're right that as a science student I hardly ever had to read or write without the use of graphs or diagrams. The idea of having students doing anything besides labs in a science class is a foreign concept to most people, especially the students. It is important for them to realize that they need to use "literacy" in all school subjects though. I liked how you mentioned using yourself as a model for the students and showing them how you read articles. This can be a great experience for them and maybe somewhat scary for you. It's a similar activity to what we did in class on Wednesday with the picture book "think aloud". Showing your own vulnerability is worth it though if the students can learn from it.
ReplyDeleteI liked that you discussed the importance of teaching and apprenticing our students how to read graphs, charts, and data. Students will find lab reports and science data foreign and difficult to interpret. It is likely that students will have had little to no exposure to scientific articles and lab reports before high school. Modeling how to read graphs and diagrams, and encouraging them to learn to do it on their own, will provide students with a universal set of skills when it comes to science curriculum. For example, a college professor once told my entire biology class, "Don't even bother reading the entire scientific articles I assign, just read and interpret the graphs, charts, diagrams to understand the results and conclusions of the study."
ReplyDeleteI liked that you reflected on your experiences with science literature, in order to relate the need and purpose for modeling metacognition for our students. I think it’s important for teachers to remember that they too had to learn how to use content literacy skills. By reflecting, we can relate to the challenges that our students are facing and come up with better ways of teaching/modeling. I know that I really benefited from my father teaching me at a young age that it is important to ask myself if I 1. Remember what I just read and 2. Understand what I just read. Before he instructed to me reflect on my reading, I didn't even realize that was something I should be actively doing as I read (to be an effective reader). Some students will be using metacognition skills without even realizing it. Regardless, a teacher should model and demonstrate how metacognition skills, and why they are beneficial, in order to get students to recognize how to use them in their studies and grow as a reader.