Reflection on Learning

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(i) Outline two (2) teaching and learning strategies that you could use in your classroom to assist your students to develop metacognitive skills. Write a brief rationale to explain your thinking behind the design of these strategies, and why you think they would be effective in promoting metacognition. Rationale According to Piaget’s developmental stage theory, adolescents in secondary schools enter the last stage of human cognitive development, the so-called “formal operational” stage, where they are capable of logical, abstract and metacognitive thinking. (Piaget, 1973). Metacognition, is a valuable skill that enables students to become aware of and control their own thinking processes, so that they can develop into capable self-regulated learners. (Bartl, 2010). However, research data show that only 30 to 35% of high school seniors achieved the formal operations stage (Renner et al., 1976). Though quite dated, these results are still valid in that they point out at least two aspects: 1) adolescents not always and spontaneously think “formally”, and 2), as argued by Nicholls (2003), the explicit teaching of metacognitive abilities is likely to be neglected in the classroom. Vygotsky (as cited in Nicholls, 2003) argued that the performance in the Zone of Proximal Development improves when the learning journey towards the learning outcome is scaffolded and facilitated. Therefore, it appears that explicitly teaching the main elements of metacognitive processes - planning, monitoring and evaluating – in the classroom would be highly beneficial to students (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2013). Drawing on Rowe’s template (as cited in Wilks, 2014, p. 4), three explicit instruction techniques - modeling, opportunity for practice and feedback - will be used below to implement two metacognitive planning strategies. • Strategy No. 1: Metacognitive Note-taking Though
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