How Students Learn-Principle#3 Predict and Explain

Principle #3: The Importance of Self-Monitoring

The ten dollar word for today’s principle is metacognition.  It simple means to self-monitor your own thinking while you learn.  This is where the students starts taking responsibility for his or her own learning.  Read the following film review:  If a serious literary critic were to write a favorable, full-length review of How Could I Tell Mother She Frightened My Boyfriends Away, Grace Plumbuster’s new story, his startled readers would assume that he had gone mad, or that Grace Plumbuster was his editor’s wife.  If you had to pause or reread the passage, then your were using metacognition to monitor your own comprehension.  This is what good readers do.  I teach my 3rd graders to predict what a story or article will be about, and then evaluate the prediction during and afterwards.  If they were self monitoring their comprehension, then they should be able to explain the passage afterwards.  Can you explain what the film critic said?

It seems to me that all three of these 3 learning principles have a lot to do with meaningful conversations in the classroom, not just read the textbook, listens to the lecture, and take the test.  As a matter of fact, the “sit and get” model of school 1.0 is antithetical to how students actually learn.  Lecture is the fastest, easiest, and least effective method to teach, and yet this 1-directional delivery of teaching is more the rule than the exception.  The Read/Write Web is a TWO-way conversation.  Both people share thoughts, and both people listen.  In doing so, both learn.  This is a powerful reason to do Cooperative Learning.  It is a powerful reason to use Read/write Web 2.0 tools. It is a powerful reason to upgrade your teaching to School 2.0.

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