Metacognitive Frameworks

Metacognition slide

I presented a snapshot of my research this year to the faculty at my high school. I just gave a brief account of the successes that resulted from use of these frames that guide students to either use the content that they have already learned to connect new information; or help them to elaborate how they understand a particular science concept. I look forward to collaborating with other teachers and designing new models for next year over the summer.

I realize (as I said at last year's Institute), that I was too often assessing my students by judging their "learning" or understanding in terms of what I thought was important. Changing labs using my new frameworks has been a wonderful transformation in student engagement. Their deep understanding is obvious by their excitement and ownership of their work. The unique quality of their report is mostly based on what connected within their own neural net and for me, so interesting to examine.

Another critical transformation has been my individual metacognitive process.  I soon discovered that I needed to drill down to what is/are the essential concepts and then build the scaffold that would guide my students to find their personal and unique perception of these central ideas. I spent many a late night at school but the work was so interesting because I could collect data the next day and immediately evaluate the outcomes.