Cognitive Processes

Chapter 8

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

In teaching about emotions and feelings, you could start out by reading a children's book, in which the characters are going through a struggle with emotions (maybe a scenario of bullying, etc.). You could ask questions for metacognition such as, "What would you have done in that situation? Do you think that what he/she did was the right thing to do? Why/Why not? I wonder if his/her feelings were hurt, what do you think? Why do you think the bully was acting that way?" etc.  You could then have them break off and complete a short writing assignment to reflect on whether they had ever had their feelings hurt by somebody, or something along those lines. During this activity, the students would be talking about thinking processes, and you would be providing opportunities for students to experiment with their memories. These are important because the age-typical characteristics for K-2, according to the book, are:

• Awareness of thought in oneself and others, but limited ability to reflect on the specific nature of one's own thought processes
• Considerable overestimation of what has been learned and how much can be remembered in the future
• Belief that learning is a relatively passive activity
• Belief that the absolute truth about any topic is "out there" somewhere, waiting to be discovered

(Excerpt from Educational Psychology: Developing Learners 7th edition by Jeanne Ellis Ormrod)


Think of an activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive and one or more problem solving skills. 

The two skills that I have in mind are note-taking (metacognitive) and heuristics (problem-solving). For example, if I presented them with information about the Boston Tea Party, they would take notes to remember certain material. For successful notes, they would have to think about what was most important to write down. Then, with the information I had given them, they could break off into small groups or pairs and use their notes to address the situation surrounding the Boston Tea Party in their own way. Would they have acted similarly to the colonists? Would they have poured all the tea into the harbor? Why or why not? If they thought they would have acted differently, what would they have done in the colonists' shoes? Explain. After they had some time to reflect on this and jot down their own ideas, we would regroup as a whole class and discuss everyone's ideas to get an idea of what the students had come up with.