Research School Network: Metacognitive Questions – Clips from the Classroom Jody Chan describes Durrington’s clip for the classroom on metacognitive questioning

Clips from the classroom is a shared platform on the EEF’s website that enables practices and professional expertise to be shared. They enable viewers to ​‘see it in practice’ and hear from colleagues as they explain their approaches in the classroom. Their intention is to provide ​‘lived experiences’ to guide teachers and schools with concrete examples of evidence informed classroom practice.

Myself and Chris Runeckles made a clips from the classroom video on metacognitive questioning, just click the image below to watch it. In this blog I explain our thinking behind the video.

Evidence suggests that the use of metacognitive strategies can lead to the equivalent of 7 months additional learning. It is described as high impact, for a low cost and is based on extensive research. The added appeal of metacognition is that it has a particularly high impact on disadvantaged learners. This is for a number of reasons, including that it helps build confidence and self-efficacy, gives strategies for when learners are stuck and encourages ownership of learning.

The video focuses primarily on the questioning aspect of metacognitive talk, which forms recommendation 5 from the Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning EEF Guidance Report. This strategy can easily be implemented into your lessons by frequently asking students metacognitive questions. By incorporating these questions regularly into your lessons, within their relevant domain, when faced with similar tasks in the future students can ask themselves these same questions to support themselves. It is an intervention that teachers of all phases can incorporate into their practice and the video is suitable for all teachers in all settings irrespective of their level of experience.

The video exemplifies how metacognitive questions can be used within the context of a year 11 History lesson being delivered by Chris. He is about to take his students through a task where they place a series of events on a timeline, a common activity in history. Before starting them on the task he firsts asks them some questions relating to the task. He gives them time to consider the questions, then cold calls to hear students’ responses. By doing this he is getting them to understand the usefulness of the task, how it relates to what they have been learning and also how it can help them develop their thinking further into cause and consequence, which is a very important skill in history. Once he has elicited from students how important the task is, he then asks them when else they may use a timeline. This question helps build the understanding that they now have this useful skill that they have at their disposal which they can use when approaching other similar tasks in history, for homework and as part of their revision. After watching Chris in the classroom viewers are asked how the questions in the clip prompt metacognitive thought.

After viewing Chis exemplify the technique in the classroom, he then talks about why he regularly incorporates metacognitive questions into his practice. As he explains, it is an aspect of metacognition that is applicable to most lessons so has made this a habitual part of his practice. Chris has spent a lot of time discussing and developing metacognitive approaches with staff at Durrington High school, it is clearly something that he is very passionate about, which is clearly conveyed in the clip. Many departments at Durrington High School have developed a set of domain specific metacognitive questions that are regularly used in lessons to give students opportunities to reflect on and discuss the work they are completing. These give students strategies to help them if they get stuck and help them think like an expert within the domain, they are in.

Having watched the video we hope that you will see how with a little pre-planning metacognitive questioning is something that we can all incorporate into our lessons so that students take more ownership of their work and engage in tasks more deeply, whether this is in lessons or in preparation for an assessment. To incorporate this into your lessons:

• First consider what you are trying to achieve with it – is it planning, monitoring or evaluating?
• Pre-plan your questions that will work well for your subject or phase
• Then make this a regular part of your lessons so that it become habitual.