It was great fun to meet with our TM consultants and consider how many ways they could use the Thinking Frames and Thinking Moves to help organise thinking and ideas connected to Christmas. Enjoy the suggestions below and please do share examples from your students with us.
As the spring term comes to a close, Thinking Matters brings you our latest Research Round-up. This month the highlighted books and articles focus on metacognitive strategies, retrieval practice, well-being and self-regulated learning.
In this article, we explain how the Thinking Matters approach follows the best research-informed strategies for the implementation of metacognition and self-regulated learning and how this relates to the EEF’s ‘Putting Evidence to Work – A School’s Guide to Implementation’.
If I shout duck, how would you respond? Any sense of urgency or fear in my voice would probably prompt a reflexive response. Duck and you would duck! Call and response is one way we help develop and create neural networks to build automaticity and reduce the bottleneck in our working memory.
Thinking Matters: Research Round-up on Metacognition and Independent Learning.
The past few weeks have been ablaze with news about AI and specifically ChatGPT; mainly its potential to become a homework shortcut or useful tool for teachers. One school, Alleyn’s in Dulwich, has moved to a flip learning model as access to ChatGPT presents easy opportunities for students to use it to generate their homework. Teachers will now set students tasks to research and prepare for their next lesson instead of sitting tests or writing essays. However, is this just another example of the forward march of algorithms and other AI technologies without anyone asking about the ethical or moral implications?
Recently we were discussing the EEF guidance report about Metacognition and Self-regulation as a team; it’s always good to go back and read the key document! It was great to have a conversation about all the different elements and tools we can give to develop a self-regulating learner. At Thinking Matters, the student is at the heart of our ‘Big Picture’, surrounded by the knowledge, tools and strategies to help them develop as independent, self-regulated learners.
This term has been a wonderful opportunity to hear from a range of different schools talking very honestly and openly about what it means to them ‘to become a Thinking School’ and what it involves to get started and how to keep the momentum. I am very grateful to the schools that have willingly opened their doors, invited us in and talked in detail about what metacognition means to them.
Priory Integrated College, Holywood, County Down is an 11-18, all ability, integrated school which has been progressing the Thinking School approach since 2019. Nicola Wilson, Principal and Deirdre Scarlett, SLT member and Drive Team Leader, recently met with TM Consultant Lorna Gardiner to discuss how they have sustained the focus on whole school metacognition through a time of considerable change.