Student-Led Metacognition and Reflection

  Chapter six of the book Rigor By Design Not Chance focuses mainly on engaging students in metacognition and reflection. Metacognition and self-reflection are vital skills students need to become independent learners. Metacognition helps monitor learning progress, while self-reflection must occur after learning. They allow students to be aware of their learning path, and students can recognize their contributions to it (Hess, 2023). The book also provides discourse and collaboration strategies that help students learn how to self-assess. One of the strategies is called the GPS-I Rule to structure productive group work. It involves group processing, positive independence, simultaneous engagement, and individual accountability (Hess, 2023). This strategy enhances students’ understanding of how to work constructively with peers. It allows students to be engaged in their learning and reflect on their understanding as it develops positive independence and individual accountability.

Reflection and metacognition can be applied to the actionable assessment cycle. In each stage are strategies that align with metacognition and reflection for students to be engaged and deepen their learning. The most impactful strategy was Student-led conferences. This strategy correlates with stage six of the Actionable Assessment Cycle because it is a performance task to assess and deepen learning. I had never known or considered using this strategy in my classroom. After learning about this strategy in the book, I am open to implementing it when I become a teacher. In this, students lead a conference with their parents and teacher. On page 143 of the book, “Ron Berger, senior advisor for teaching and learning at EL Education, describes student-led parent conferences as an engine that can transform teacher practice, increase parent engagement, and build metacognitive skills in students at any grade level” (Hess, 2023). It is an effective tool for students to be engaged in their goal-setting and learn how to reflect on their work. The students learn how to metacognitively look at their work and understand how to build on it. In my future class, I would spend a few lessons preparing the students for their conferences. This would include allowing them time to reflect on which work they have done that they are proud of and what they feel needs to be improved. During the conference, students can share their academic and personal goals so the parents and I can find the best ways to support them in meeting their goals. 


An article that supports the idea of student-led conferences is from Edutopia. The article is called Student-Led Conferences: Resources for Educators. This article is related to the effectiveness of student-led conferences on students and how I can help them as a teacher. The article stated, “These conferences can provide powerful opportunities for students to advocate for their own learning” (Cronin, 2016). Student-led conferences allow students to understand their learning better as they look at their efforts and work differently. The article makes the same points as the book regarding higher family engagement and students taking accountability for their learning and progress.

      

        The article provides many resources for student-led conferences, including worksheets for students to fill out before the conference to discover what they want to share. An example of this is shown below:

                                    (Cronin, 2016)


This example shows the extent to which students prepare for the conference and what they have to reflect on. The conferences will lead to more metacognitive thinking during learning. After these conferences, the students will start to metacognitively think about their performance and how it will relate to the next conference. Student-led conferences are a great strategy to enhance and promote metacognition and reflection on student learning. 



References

Cronin, Ashley. (July 2016). Student-Led Conferences: Resources for Educators. Edutopia.  https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-led-conferences-resources-ashley-cronin

Hess, Karin. (2023).  Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable   Instruction and Assessment. ASCD ASSN SUPERV CURR DEV, 2023.

Comments

  1. Lucy PattisonNovember 28, 2023 at 8:34 AM

    I love the idea of student-led conferences. Throughout my K-12 schooling, I can't recall ever participating in a student-led conference. I wonder if teachers have to model how to fill out the worksheets. I also wonder how long the conferences should be. I would like to see if there is research on the effects of student-led conferences on student engagement. Overall, I am excited to implement student-led conferences in my future classroom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mr. ForsytheNovember 29, 2023 at 8:15 PM

    Hi Megan,
    I really like your definition of metacognition about monitoring the learning progress of students, and these are skills that are needed to become independent learners. You mentioned the GPS-I strategy, which involves group work amongst peers that simultaneously builds upon students' collaboration skills and individual accountability. I always like how you apply these strategies and concepts to the actionable assessment cycle. The article you chose about student-led conferences was actually really interesting to think about. Referring to other chapters, we learned about how student-led learning can be a powerful tool for their own benefit. To me, students who can lead a discussion/teach a concept to their peers or classroom can benefit their peers as well as themselves. Alluding to the student-led activities, reflection is almost just as critical. What worked, what didn’t, and how can we improve? Great work.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dr. Beth Walsh-MoormanDecember 2, 2023 at 8:19 AM

    I worked in a school that had these, and they were powerful to witness.

    ReplyDelete

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