: “I just know!” Explicitly teaching pupils metacognitive strategies Without explicit teaching of the strategies of metacognition, it is hard for pupils to explain their own thinking to themselves.

One of my favourite memories of year 2 SATs (not a sentence starter you hear often) was marking a reasoning paper that belonged to a pupil in my class. When looking at his response to a 2‑mark problem solving question, he had recorded the correct number in the answer box but in the show your workings space, was a pictorial representation that resembled this…

When I later asked him to explain it, he told me quite plainly, that it was his brain working really hard. I saw it. I did check in the guidance but ​‘pictorial representation of a busy brain’ did not appear in the list of example responses for that particular question!

What this experience taught me was that without explicit teaching of the tools, strategies or language of metacognition, it is hard for pupils to understand and explain their own thinking to themselves, let alone to others.

What the research evidence says

Recommendation 2 of the EEF’s Metacognition and Self-Regulation Guidance Report explores explicitly teaching pupils metacognitive strategies, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. The recommendation is grounded in classroom practice, allowing us to fully understand what this would look like in different subjects, ages and contents.

The research evidence emphasises the notion that explicit instruction of metacognitive thinking does not mean just say everything we are thinking. As practitioners, we have to make careful, deliberate and intentional decisions about the steps we take to build independence in this area. We must consider exactly what we are modelling, when we are prompting, and what scaffolding pupils require. Guiding pupils through worked examples gives them the tools to have a go themselves. Equally important is making space to highlight and accept errors in our thinking, so pupils learn that struggle and mistake-making are part of learning. These reflections can help pupils accept challenge and maintain effort in the face of adversity.

Practical classroom strategies

As a strategy, questioning is potentially the most powerful tool a teacher can use when promoting and encouraging the development of metacognitive thinking.

The Promoting metacognitive talk downloadable resource is a useful prompt for adults to use when making intentional and deliberate decisions about how to explicitly teach each of these aspects. It guides practitioners through a range of questions aimed at encouraging planning, monitoring and evaluating aspects, but also the pupils’ knowledge of the task, the strategies and themselves.

The tool provides teachers with a framework to either use as published, or can be edited and adapted to meet the needs, skills and language abilities of their pupils.

Example in action

In our new series of Clips from the Classroom, we follow a Year 3 teacher who has taken this tool and adapted it to meet the needs of her class to create their Thinking Steps. The teacher first models this simplified tool before pupils begin using it independently to verbalise their understanding and explain their thinking to themselves and others. In the Clip, you see Year 3 pupils prompted with questions such as ​‘Have I seen something similar’ and ​‘What could I have done better?’ before independently using the prompts during partner discussion.

By explicitly teaching pupils how to plan, monitor and evaluate their thinking, we move them from simply ​‘knowing’ to understanding how they know and being able to explain it to others. No busy brain pictures in sight!