My first module in my MA was on metacognition. As with many things I took it far too earnestly and read the field of metacognition. The result was a whole-school CPD on metacognition delivered as a carousel activity. Of course, by metacognition we mean assessment for learning (or AfL).
The take-home message was that the best metacognitive activity is subject-specific (sorry any whole-school teaching and learning folk who would like it to be otherwise!). Moreover, we shouldn’t just be teaching students to recall and produce subject-specific strategies (i.e. tracking a motif across an extract in literature), but rather we should be creating the conditions whereby they develop the sense of where and when to use those strategies. Our PE staff who teach elite programs had some excellent ideas for how to do this.
While perhaps a more ideological aim than a pragmatic one (getting students to respond to teacher comments in a particular colour is easier to implement whole-school, for example), this evidence-based practice offers potentially the greatest gains.
The slides I used are shown below (feel free to download and reuse). Feel free to contact me for consultation or conversation.
