7: metacognition

Prompt: Consider a lesson plan you might use. Which metacognitive skills/abilities are involved as students gain facility/knowledge in this domain?

This week in my school rotation, I read a story to a class of 20 kindergartners. Once we were all in a circle on the rug I slightly panicked. In my head I was thinking, "What in the world am I supposed to be doing?!? They're all staring at me!" Luckily for me, my Reading Ed 430 skills came back to me and I remembered the process of a read aloud.

Before I began reading the book, I used the poster the teacher made to explain the schedule for the next hour.
"Our objective today is to identify fantasy and reality. First I'm going to read our book Bear Snores On. Then we are going to make a chart about things that are fantasy and things that are reality from the book. Next you will draw something from the book that was fantasy and something that was reality on your own paper and write a sentence. After that, we will meet back together and 'turn and talk' with our neighbors about what we did."  
I think that this layout helped begin the process of metacognitive thinking for the students because it made them aware of what was coming up. This agenda prepared their minds and gave them a preview of what we were learning and what we would be doing with that information. This shows the use of the covert strategy of identifying important information, especially highlighting the focus on fantasy and reality (which could have been missed since it wasn't included in the book's story line explicitly.)

Then I asked the students if they knew what the words fantasy and reality meant. No one did, so I explained that fantasy is something that is not real/cannot happen, like make believe. Reality is something that can happen in real life.

After that I moved on to the book. First I asked the kids what they predicted the book was going to be about. When they gave an answer, I asked them why they thought that. For example, one girl guessed the book was about a bear's friends. When I asked her why, she said because there was a bear with other animals on the cover. This questioning required the students to explain their reasoning, which is reflective of metacognition.

Next we took a 'picture walk'. As I flipped through the pages I asked the students what they thought was happening. One boy explained that something was sad, when I asked him why, he explained that he thought that because the bear was crying. In the same way as the cover prediction, these questions got the students thinking deeper about what they thought. Throughout the pages I asked the students to look for things that were fantasy or reality to warm up their minds for the activity later.

After the picture walk I began the story. While I read, students would share if they noticed something was fantasy or reality. When they did I would ask them why they thought so, and they would explain something like 'bunnies can't cook' or 'bears don't cry'. Other times I would use the covert strategy of comprehension monitoring by asking the students if what they saw was fantasy or reality. This let me know if I needed to explain further or if the students were understanding the topic.

After the students finished their illustrations and sentences on their own, they came back to the rug. I paired them up and asked them to share what they drew with their partner. This portion of the activity shows a variety of metacognitive skills. One is summarizing their work, providing a deeper understanding. Another is that in explaining their work to a partner, the students had to look back over their thinking to give an appropriate answer.

Big surprise, my article is from education.com! I appreciate the clearness of this article and how it provides multiple options for developing metacognitive skills in the classroom.
http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Dev_Metacognition/