Session 2: Metacognitive Strategies and Student Reflection

As a librarian, I have many opportunities to help students build metacognitive strategies.  By modeling thought processes as applicable, incorporating reflective journals or blogging, and providing self-assessment tools, I can support students as they build their repertoire of thinking, research and creativity skills.

Whenever we start a new research project I could have my students complete K-W-L charts to help them clarify their thinking and help them identify their informational needs to enable them to better target their research topics and effort.  Initially I would model the thought processes needed to complete the K-W-L chart as we brainstormed together and I recorded the responses on the SMARTBoard to scaffold their learning.  Also, I can expose the children to a wide variety of graphic organizers and bookmark graphic organizer resources in my Tbritt63 Portaportal bookmarking file I use with my students to facilitate their ability to quickly access a variety of graphic organizers and to make it easy for them to access these tools for their own purposes at home.

Another option to help my students build their metacognitive strategies would be to incorporate thinking journals or blogging in which students would “debrief” upon the completion of a research/project unit in which they would reflect on what they had learned and their thoughts on the tools, ease of use, the outcome, etc.  Since each unit introduces new tools and new potential project outcomes, students will be keeping a running record of the array of tools and abilities they are developing.

Another tool I could employ to help students reflect and analyze their progress and evaluate their results would be to employ digital surveys in which students could take pre and/or post assessments.  Self-assessments such as rubrics, checklists, and other supports could allow my students to analyze, self-assess, and reflect on their progress throughout their learning process.  When I used the rubrics on the PhotoStory Author Study projects in Capstone I, I had students self-assess, then I assessed with them either verifying their assessment or helping them if their assessment needed refinement.