Metacognition is the ability to examine how you process thoughts and feelings. This ability encourages students to understand how they learn best. It also helps them to develop self-awareness skills that become important as they get older.

Metacognition is one’s ability to use prior knowledge to plan a strategy for approaching a learning task, take necessary steps to problem solve, reflect on and evaluate results, and modify one’s approach as needed.

This is the seven-step model for explicitly teaching metacognitive strategies as recommended by the EEF report:

• Activating prior knowledge;
• Explicit strategy instruction;
• Modelling of learned strategy;
• Memorisation of strategy;
• Guided practice;
• Independent practice;
• Structured reflection.

Strategies for using metacognition when you study

• Use your syllabus as a roadmap. Look at your syllabus.
• Summon your prior knowledge.
• Think aloud.
• Ask yourself questions.
• Use writing.
• Organize your thoughts.
• Take notes from memory.
• Review your exams.

Metacognitive practices are useful for all learners from primary level upwards. Using metacognition improves students’ academic achievement across learning domains. Metacognitive skills help students to transfer what they have learnt from one context to another or from a previous task to a new task.

Metacognition is broadly defined as beliefs about one’s own cognition, and it is involved in the monitoring, control and appraisal (i.e., the interpretation) of one’s own thoughts. Metacognition serves as an internal guide that allows people to recognise their own thoughts, helping to allow them to take action.

On one level, reading critically simply means asking questions and evaluating the claims, and not simply accepting what you read. However, the types of questions you ask, and the types of issues you prioritise in your evaluation, can vary considerably.

Higher-order questions are those that the students cannot answer just by simple recollection or by reading the information “verbatim” from the text. Higher-order questions put advanced cognitive demand on students. They encourage students to think beyond literal questions.

Higher-level questions are those requiring complex application (e.g., analysis, synthesis, and evaluation skills). Usually questions at the lower levels are appropriate for: evaluating students’ preparation and comprehension.