The metacognitive wrapper in many
ways is the perfect storm of a metacognitive strategy, in both its structure
and procedure. It structure utilises prior knowledge, and engages both
strategic thinking and motivation, while it’s procedure beginning before a task
or lesson has begun allows students to gain some form of control over their
thinking and emotions from the off, and then orchestrate their thinking over
the duration of the lesson. The wrapper wraps around the lesson or task,
ensuring that reflection occurs and that long term metacognitive behaviours are
valued, promoted and developed.
Put simply a metacognitive wrapper
is a task that is completed at the beginning and at the end of an activity or
lesson, and is designed to help students plan or at the very least consider
their thinking over a lesson. The integration of thinking and content and the
opportunity for forethought have big impacts on learning [2] Studies have shown the metacognitive
behaviour of self-questioning to have the biggest effect if carried out before
the lesson, while slightly lower after the lesson and much lower during the
lesson[3].
Common sense would suggest that trying to be self-questioning during a lesson
could be distracting to all but the most able learners. Echoing what we know
about the types feedback most useful to beginner learners that complex feedback
while learning can be overwhelming, and should be corrective in nature and
focussed upon content knowledge. The wrapper caters for this by emphasising
metacognition before and after the act of learning.
Wrappers tend to have a consistent
of design although the components are not always equivocal, and some will not
be useful for every task.
Designing the wrapper
1. Learning intention should be
referenced.
A wrapper should firstly include a
statement to make clear what the students are about to learn. This should be
broad terms with only sufficient detail to make clear the types of ideas and
thinking that may be useful.
2. Prior knowledge should be
prompted.
The first question should always
prompt useful content knowledge. It is preferable to phrase this speculatively
as in:
“What might you already know about
…?
The “might” helps keep
possibilities open early in the lesson granting opportunity to come back to
these original thoughts, so that students can validate, dismiss or correct them
or even become more confident in their own thinking. Although it must be noted
that becoming less confident in their knowledge is just as valid a response, as
they could either be unlearning a misconception, which is a difficult process
or be questioning why they believe something rather just accepting something is
right. That is to say, they can practice being metacognitive.
3. Student goal setting.
The third element is a target
setting one that could be the visualisation of a success criteria or the
setting of a self-reward for success. This could this be a way of tapping into
the intrinsic learner motivation? Findlay and Cooper (Locus of control and
academic achievement ) demonstrated that those students who are internally
motivated perform better than those who delegate this responsibility. An
alternative focus may be to ask about the usefulness of what is being is
learned, as task value is a powerful metacognitive strategy (DeBoer)
What do you want to learn about
“Electromagnets” today?
Or
How will you know that you are
being successful today?
Or
Why is it important that we
understand why “earth quakes” happen?
4. Prompting Strategic thinking.
Students will benefit from help in
working out concrete ways of engaging with the learning task. This may be structuring their thinking or how
they could go about completing the task. For example:
What steps will you need to take to
complete this task?
or
What ways of thinking might help
you solve this problem?
5.Affective control: Learner
attributes.
The final element to a wrapper is
to focus on a learner attribute such as motivation or being resourceful. This
is often the quickest win for the students and for the teacher.
How motivated are you today?
or
How resilient are you feeling
today?
Finally prepare the end part of the
wrapper by changing the tense of the questions. So What do you already know
about…?” turns into “Was the knowledge you had useful?”, or “How might you plan
your work to ensure quality?” turns into “did your plan help you structure your
work in a high quality way? The premise here is to allow them to recognise
changes: in what they know,: in how
confident are they in this knowledge In how to go about solving this kind of
problem, after all change is learning.
Procedure for using a wrapper.
The process of using a
metacognitive wrapper is a simple one, albeit with nuance. It starts with
1.Student individual thinking time.
Have the questions selected
available at the start of the lesson. You may need to introduce the lesson
topic, the purpose of these questions and to make clear the idea that it is OK
to be wrong at this point in time, but little more. Allow the students 4 or 5
minutes to ponder and note down their ideas.
2. Whole class response.
Randomly select a few responses for
each of the posed questions and record upon the board thereby make their
thinking visible. Make a point after the initial trawl of asking if anyone has
something to add. There is no need to judge any responses as right or wrong at
this point even if their response is a negative one such as "I'm not
motivated today ", as they have already engaged in the type of thinking
you require. The important part here is that we communicate through the
procedure that “your motivation matters and it is your responsibility.”
However, be aware of bandwagon jumping with negative comments. Peer culture is
very strong, and if you find yourself with growing negativity and students
playing to the crowd. If so, challenge it by making it clear what the culture
for learning needs to be like for their success. This may not happen overnight,
but must start somewhere. Why not here? The students are voicing opinion of
their schooling, they are engaged in what you want them to be engaged in.
Seeking multiple responses provides
the students with a palette of choices they can make. Simple phrases like “You
can steal any of the ideas you hear.” encourages students to begin to reflect
on best methods of working and make active choices.
3.The lesson or the task.
Although the procedure does not
require the teacher to actively promote metacognitive thinking, you will be
sensitised to how the students are going about the learning process. alongside
the teacher led conversations of a classroom, you will have opportunity prompt
some individual students in controlling their metacognition. The language of
choice and the use of ambiguous responses to their questions, such as “could
be”, encourages student ownership of the problem at hand, and therefore gain
some experience in utilising their metacognition. Some students will require
highly structured choices, as in “you can either do A, B or C” while others
will be able to respond to “So what are your options here?” Ultimately the
students must make the decision of what they do next.
4. Individual reflection.
Using the end wrapper questions,
once again a moment to reflect and prepare responses. Ask the student to note
down their responses.
5. Whole class debrief.
Again, selected at random, although
through the discourse of the lesson you may want to highlight particular
students who may have been successful (or not) in controlling their thinking,
changing their minds, getting unstuck or being resilient. There is no need to
record their responses as what important here is the conversation that debriefs
their process. You are likely to hear are stories of improvement and by
highlighting these attributes within a specific learning activity helps makes
them more visible to all learners. Each part of this review is important: the
content, the strategies, the feelings, the attributes, as all are intertwined
in the experiences of the students (Nuthall)
The motivation to engage is a vital
part of the process, so I tend to use this as one of the prompts more often
than not. The conversations around motivation are always interesting and often
highlight its fluctuating nature as the lesson ebbs and flows, but how if we
are aware of it we can begin to learn how to control it. It is best summarised
by an anecdote from a first-year teacher following a training session. He had a
busy day, a full teaching day, coursework marking with a looming deadline, a
lunchtime mentor meeting and then an afterschool training session on the charms
of metacognition. He said as much as we started. All I could do was to thank
him for his response and for being there. The session went well and we
concluded by going back to the wrapper task. He could not wait to respond to
this. At first, he accused (in the best sort of way) me of “tricking him into
being motivated”, We revisited the original questions and as we did the
conversation became centred around who had made it important. He responded “it
was me, I made it important, I was tired and had didn’t want to be here, but I
realised that my motivation was important and I had to find a way of being
motivated”. The focus became how he as learner had taken control of his
thinking and actions. he had become metacognitive. Learners often just need the
chance to catch themselves doing it, if I had challenged the unmotivated
response of the teacher or of students then I could prevent any chance of this
experience and realisation taking place. In essence, the teacher needs
mechanisms to keep themselves out of the way to allow students to practice
self-monitoring while completing tasks and learning. So, the next step in
increasing student self-regulation and metacognition is to increase student
control.
[2] Hattie, Biggs and Purdie 1996: Effects of Learning Skills
Interventions on Student Learning: A Meta-Analysis
[3] Huang 1991: A Meta-analysis of Student Self-questioning strategies
