learntolearn

Do we want students to take ownership of their learning, to become more confident and self-directed, to become life-long learners?  A way to encourage and support them in this endeavor is to engage them in meta learning. Meta Learning: understanding, directing, and assessing your learning.  Here are some suggestions:

1. Make “learning about learning” a daily part of classroom conversation.
2. Include students in lesson planning.
3. Teach “reflection tools” and use them regularly in the classroom.
4. Given your model for lesson planning/teaching, introduce specific learning strategies.  In our case, there will be strategies for Purpose, Operations, Remembering, Teamwork,  Action, Laying a Foundation, and Self-management.
5. Initiate, encourage, and support the use of student designed and used assessment tools.

Today we will write about two of these suggestions.

1. Make “learning about learning” a daily part of classroom conversation.  Recently I found a wonderful paper by Chris Watkins titled “Learning about Learning” that goes into an excellent level of detail about how to make learning a part of classroom discussion.  https://www.um.edu.mt/educ/about/publications/mrer/files/JMERN5I2P3.pdf

He suggests 4 practices taught over time:

*noticing things about learning (in real time)

*talking about learning (retell learning stories)

*reflecting on learning (writing in a learning journal)

*making learning an object of learning (focusing on the process)

2. Including students in lesson planning.  Do students know that teachers make/write

some sort of lesson plan?  What if they understood the parts of a lesson plan?

Would they be able to assess their strengths and challenges before the lesson

began and evaluate their learning after the lesson?  I think so!

If that’s the case, can we teach students to understand and rewrite plans to

meet their own needs?  I say Yes!

We have created a mini text (20 slides) to explain the process of Meta

Lesson Planning.  It is available on Google Docs:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VMJFwScnC7Tl7yEiTh_anASgze9YANJKshnZKuCnwo4/edit#slide=id.p4

In subsequent blogs we will describe and link other tools for teaching students to be meta learners.

We’d love to have your feedback. This is a work in progress.