Like most skills, children benefit from being explicitly taught metacognitive learning strategies. John Dewey, the well known educational psychologist, once said, “we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

It doesn’t need to be a mystery helping your child reflect on their learning.

Here are 5 metacognitive learning strategies to encourage self-reflection in your child:

Metacognitive Learning Strategy #1: Ask Good Questions

Repeatedly ask thoughtful questions across different areas of life, helping your child learn to consistently reflect. Here are a handful of questions to start off with:

• What key ideas did you learn?
• What makes you curious?
• What do you want to learn more about?
• What did you learn that you weren’t planning on?
• What struggles did you encounter in your learning? How did you handle them?
• What did you enjoy the most about what you learned?

Metacognitive Learning Strategy #2: Encourage Honesty

Learning isn’t always fun. Some topics aren’t interesting. We all learn differently.

Allow and even encourage your child to be honest about what they like and loathe about school and learning. Be slow to correct them or find the silver-lining. Instead, try hearing them and affirming them, which will help you get a more clear view of what type of learner your child is.

Metacognitive Learning Strategy #3: Keep a Learning Journal

Keeping a Learning Journal, where your child records what they are learning and questions they have can be the catalyst to speed up their enjoyment of learning. Journaling improves memory, promotes self-awareness, and even supports our physical health.

We’re after quality, not quantity. Reflecting on an experience, even if it’s only a sentence or two, is beneficial in helping us internalize our learning.

Metacognitive Learning Strategy #4: Teach How to Give and Receive Feedback

No one is born knowing everything. We are bound to make mistakes whenever we attempt to learn something new. Instead of having it crush your child or make them feel less than, we can show all of the lessons we can learn from our mistakes.

This begins with explicitly teaching your child how to give and receive feedback. Constructive feedback has 5 steps:

1. Begin with acknowledging the positive or what they did well (Praise the process, not the product)
2. Identify the specific area for feedback
3. Describe where your child made their mistake
4. Using both questioning and direct feedback, help your child brainstorm alternative answers
5. Remind your child of their strengths and encourage them to keep trying

This will lead to a strengthened growth-mindset for your child, which will lead to countless short-term and long-term benefits! Of all metacognitive learning strategies, this may be the most impactful one.

Metacognitive Learning Strategy #5: Have Your Child Identify Their Strengths and Weaknesses

The process is more important than the product. This could be as simple as a T-Chart, where you and your child outline their strengths and weaknesses. Offering your child the opportunity to self-reflect as to what comes easy to them and what doesn’t is a valuable experience in building your child’s self-awareness and a solid baseline of humility.

Yes, we want to acknowledge and reinforce our children in their strengths, but we also want them to be humble enough to think of and even articulate their weaknesses.

Strive Learning Solutions exists to support all students with comprehensive learning solutions.

Regardless of your child’s age or academic need, we have a team of experts that would love to partner with you.

Inquire today or book a consultation, and you will receive your first session FREE!