When I teach, I try not to only focus on the scientific body of knowledge that students must attain, but also the skills they must develop to make them more successful learners. Metacognition is one of those skills that I hope students are more aware of upon completion of their courses. Science contains a lot of big words, formulas, and laws that most students find difficult to understand. Through my experience, when students are asked to extract and organize the important concepts of a particular chapter, most students highlighted the complete text, except the titles. I have seen students judge science content by just skimming through the chapters. Some even study only just before the test by trying to memorize and cram as much content as possible. But, what are they actually learning?
Metacognitive prompts (MP) allows students to develop their skills of planning, organizing, mapping, and making connections with the content they are engaging with. These prompts can be integrated into every lesson and consist of graphic organizers such as KWL charts, sequence diagrams, or mind maps. They allow students to filter, organize, and visualize heavy science content in ways that they can better understand them. The beauty of this type of assessment is that it is implemented on an ongoing basis so teachers can gather multiple data points before, during, and after the learning process.
Let's take a look at an example. In the characteristics of life lesson, students are asked before the lesson to write their thoughts on what makes something living. During their lesson, they must edit or add to their initial thoughts and organize the characteristics into a graphic organizer such as a mind map. At the end of the lesson, students can reflect on what they learned and have created a visual representation of the lesson. The integration of formative assessment during teaching plays a more useful and effective role in student learning rather than the first indication that students did not understand the material is when they fail in a test. (Shepard, 2000). This genre of assessment not only shines a light on what was done well in teaching and learning but also sheds light on opportunities for improvement. Student answers on the MP formative assessments provide insight about each learner's current understanding and allow me to modify the course of instruction to address student learning gaps and misconceptions. Since the MP is a thinking plan that is built upon throughout the lesson, scaffolding the student's learning and providing feedback can help improve the learning process. The cycle of improvement and feedback allows me and the students to focus on learning rather than grades (Shepard, 2005). Looking back at the previous example, if a student list still contains that breathing is a characteristic of life, then I could address this misconception before continuing to the next lesson.
Since metacognition is a skill that needs to be built upon, some students would need guidance to become more aware of their thinking processes. However, these skills are vital for understanding and remembering key concepts in science. Learning is enhanced by backward design meaning that the goals of the course and the evidence of understanding are identified, then a plan for instruction is put in place (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Once, the desired results are identified, MPs can be designed to be goal-oriented to provide evidence of understanding. While designing this formative assessment, I ask myself, is the MP is aligned with the goals of the course? The learning goals of the MP are clearly defined to the students so that they are able to understand the purpose of the assessment and how it is linked to the overall goals of the course. With regard to the example above, the learning goal would be for students to classify things as living or nonliving based on a list of characteristics of life. This fits in the long term goal of how living things are organized into subsystems that function together for the stability of the whole system. Once the goals are defined, the MP must be designed in a way where I can collect multiple data points on student understanding. For example, while I review an MP, I am able to see if students have understood the lesson by analyzing their diagrams to see how they have summarized and connected the concepts they learned. The MP design does not only tell me if they are able to recall information but also allows me to see if students can extend their knowledge and apply it in new contexts. In the characteristics of life MP, the list of multiple characteristics of life is applied to examples and non-examples of each element in their diagrams. In turn, these prompts allow me to make decisions and provide feedback on where students are at, the knowledge they have gained, and where they need to be with regards to the goals of the course.
In an evolving digital world, there are many applications that are not only user-friendly but engaging for students to work with. Keeping in mind the purpose of the MP and working backward, this genre of assessments could be redesigned to incorporate an eJournal using Google Drive which can allow learning and feedback to happened asynchronously. There are also free tech tools available, such as Canva, Lucidchart, and Dotstorming that allow students to create and share their MPs online. The shifting of formative assessments from paper to digital contexts allows students and teachers to keep all their work, comments, and feedback in one location, which consequently is a great resource for students even after they finish the course.
References
Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.Â
Shepard, L. A. (2005). Linking formative assessment to scaffolding. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 66-70.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. (Vol. Expanded 2nd ed). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.