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I want to take another look at the lesson that Moira, Diana and Wil worked on--on the train ride home, I was thinking about a way to make evident metacognition as the lesson proceeds.

I believe that metacognition is something that everyone is doing all the time (as my illustration will hopefully point out). What isn't automatic is student use of the metacognitive process--this is a habit that we teach and hopefully get to run in the background (a delightful soundtrack!).

In the lesson that Moira and Diane presented (thanks for starting this discussion!) they were teaching a science lesson--for the sake of this discussion let's narrow it to the lesson on the ecosystem that they spoke about in class. The three part lesson goes like this:

I. "What are the first three words that come to mind when I say ecosystem."

     Think/pair/share your words

     Write a story about your personal experience with an ecosystem using the words.

    Come up with a class understanding of what an ecosystem is.

  II. "What in your story is congruent with this definition?" or "Analyze your story with this definition in  mind."

     or "What in your story illustrates this definition?"

"Partner up and write a story with your partner's three words."

III.  Do I need to go back through the task to fill in any "blanks" in my understanding?  How might I appy this line of thinking to other content/problems?

Now for imagination time! We are teaching this class to a group of 30, we're going to crawl inside one their heads. The lesson begins, teacher gives the first direction. Sallie Sue (our student with the flip top head) is listening to the directions. She tries to think of the first three words but she is distracted by the two students who are sitting behind her --she doubles her concentration and filters out their voices--her self awareness (I'm getting distracted and I need to focus and ignore them--is metacognition.). She comes up with three words, "green, water, fit." Her partner comes up with, "bugs, plants, water." Upon hearing bugs, Sallie Sue begins thinking about a trip that she took to the Insectarium last year and she starts to think about how her experiences there might help her understand what an ecosystem is. (She is being metacognitive, thinking about her thoughts and how she could use them to advance her understanding of the word ecosystem.)

We could keep analyzing each step of the assignment, but then this post would get really long. What I hope the story so far illustrates is a difference between cognition and metacognition. In metacognition you think about what you know, what you are doing, and what your cognitive and/or affective state is.

The unconscious dialogue that is metacognition is always happening in the background. What we need to do as educators is help students take the time to make this dialogue evident between their cognitive unconscious and their conscious (storyteller for the BBI folks). So, when Sallie Sue registers a distraction in the room, she identifies it, acknowledges that it will get in the way of her learning, and takes steps to proceed in a way that makes learning possible for her--she is thinking about how she thinks. When she flashes to the field trip, AND thinks about how those experiences/thoughts might help her with the current task she is being metacognitive.

So why don't I think that asking questions like "what else do you want to learn about ecosystems?" or "what blanks do I need to go back and fill in?" necessarily trigger metacognition? If I give you the directions to bake a cake and ask you what else you want to know or what blanks you need filled in to feel ready to proceed with the cake baking---You won't necessarily be thinking about your thinking, you might just be engaged in a cognitive activity. Asking how baking powder works in the recipe is a cognitive skill question, not a metacognitive analysis.