The Art of Metacognition
in 10th grade
my french teacher walked into our
classroom and announced that we had a
french speaking test on monday
let me tell you one thing french is a
truly beautiful language
i especially love how words like creme
brulee and macaron
just roll off of my tongue and into my
belly it’s beautiful
and delicious but there was a tiny issue
i couldn’t speak french to save my life
and naturally when i heard her say we
had a test i panicked
i went home and did the only thing i
could think of
cram i looked through all my notes i
tried to memorize everything
and i pulled multiple all-nighters
before the test
and to be honest i was overwhelmed but i
seriously thought it would work
but it didn’t and i didn’t do so great
on the test
and i was upset but i wasn’t upset about
the grade i had received on the test
but rather on the fact that
my studying technique my last minute
sitting technique had not helped me
cramming everybody’s go-to minute
studying technique
had failed me and i couldn’t understand
why
if everyone did it then why didn’t it
work
and i was curious but soon i found out
that when you’re cramming
you’re simply training your mind to
repeat a set of information
over and over again essentially you’re
copy pasting that and when you’re copy
pasting something
you’re not making connections to that
piece of information
and that’s where the problem is not
making connections
because making connections is the best
way to learn something and being able to
remember something for a long term
and when we’re not making connections we
can’t remember it
also when you’re cramming you’re shoving
so much information into your brain
that you’re placing so much stress and
your anxiety and frustration levels just
increase
and that’s exactly what’s keeping you
from being able to learn
and remember what you learned and so my
dear friends
our favorite studying technique aka
cramming
will never ever help us learn
now you might be wondering if cramming
doesn’t work
what does what helps us learn the best
and i was curious and so i turned to my
trusted
advisor google for some help
and during my research process i came
across one word
that changed my entire perspective on
learning
metacognition what is it let’s split the
word up
meta is a reference to oneself and
cognition
is the process through which we gain
knowledge through our thoughts
experiences and senses and when we put
them together
metacognition means being aware of one’s
own thought processes
and through which we learn in a sense
thinking about our thinking
now how is metacognition efficient why
is it better than cramming well
oftentimes
when we want to understand something we
simply study it right
except that’s not helping us you see
over time studying has just become a
repetitive habit that we all do
in order to pass assessments
and that’s not what studying should be
about studying
should be about remembering what you
learned
making connections and truly
understanding it
that’s not studying that’s something
completely
different that’s learning
learning is being able to remember what
you
learned for a long amount of time making
connections
truly understanding it and in the end
being able to create your own concepts
and evolving your knowledge
that’s learning and metacognition
metacognitive thinking can help us learn
because when you use metacognition you
start to think about
your way of thinking and you realize
what are how you learn and how you think
and how you should
think to better your learning
metacognition can be thought of as a
cycle the metacognitive cycle
in fact i have an acronym to help you
guys remember the cycle
spade like the spade of aces and if you
want to ace your learning
you use spade spade stands for
spot plan assess adapt
and evolve now you might be wondering
adapt doesn’t belong there because it
doesn’t start with a d
well you’re just gonna have to adapt to
the fact that it doesn’t start with a d
now let’s dive a little bit deeper into
the spade
spade s spot spot
your task identify this concept that you
want to learn
or this problem that you want to solve
and this can be anything
how to drive a car how to play chess or
how to do pemdas
next plan to me this is the second most
important part of spade because this is
where you choose to learn
instead of study this is where you
choose the right
path just learning something
planning in order to start off planning
there’s one thing we all have to do
put away distractions and i’m pretty
sure we’re all guilty of doing this
looking at the office memes or watching
youtube videos on how to dress your cat
up for halloween
especially when you don’t even have a
cat
is first of all a bit concerning but
second it’s not the best way to start
learning
so do away with all your distractions
then
identify your strengths and weaknesses
what are things you know and what are
things you don’t know
because now once you recognize these
things
you’re not wasting time trying to
relearn things that you already know
next step of planning is to implement
your strategies
we all learn every day we all learn
different things
and we all learn them in different ways
and so these strategies that we use to
help us learn
will be different for everyone but i’ve
got three strategies
that are fail proof and will help you
learn anything that you want to learn
and they are space repetition findments
technique
and experiential learning let’s start
with space repetition
space repetition is simply the process
of using flash cards
to learn something over a long period of
time
now this might seem like repeating it
and in some sense you
are but the key difference here is that
you’re repeating you’re learning this
over a long span of time
because when you’re cramming you’re
either learning everything
and shoving all information in an hour
or five minutes
but when you spread it out over weeks or
even days of learning you’re able to
remember this more
according to hermann ebangsha
a renowned psychologist who’s known for
his work
on memory has said
that 60 of what we learn we forget in 20
minutes
that’s it 20 minutes is all it takes to
forget more than 50 percent of what you
just learned
with such fickle memory we have to
implement strategies
that then will help us remember
something for a long time because if we
don’t remember it
we haven’t learned it the second
strategy
feinman’s technique was developed by
richard b
feynman a physicist who won the nobel
prize for this
technique and when you know he won a
nobel prize for this
you know the technique has to work
feynman’s technique
is the process of teaching someone else
the concept that you have learned
in the simplest language possible
it’s being able to teach appear
and help them through their mistakes and
questions and
bring them to the place that you are
right now
this ensures that you know the material
in a deep enough way that you’re able to
teach someone else from the beginning
that’s fineman’s technique last but not
least
is experiential learning experience
as we all know it is an important way
that we
learn in lives and we have to use this
to our benefit
experiential learning can look different
for different people based on what we
want to learn
but it can be seen in two common ways
one you’re watching you’re observing
someone else
do this task that you want to learn and
two
you’re doing the task yourself that’s
experiential learning
you’re getting hands on you’re
experiencing it
for example if you wanted to learn how
to paint a tree
then you would watch someone else a
little bit more experienced
paint a tree then you would take notes
on their strategies
then you would plant the tree on your
own
that’s experiential learning and these
three strategies
will always help you learn anything you
want to learn in the most
efficient way possible the next part of
spade
is to assess assess yourself test
yourself
over these concepts that you’re learning
this is important because
this is how you know your progression
because also this is important because
you
assessing helps you bring over to the
next part of spade
adapt adapt to me is this most
important part of spade adapting we’re
changing the way we’re thinking we’re
molding the way we’re thinking to
become better learners this is where we
collect data
from our assessments on questions we got
right and we got wrong
then we look a little deeper into the
questions we got wrong why did we get
them wrong
when we first looked at that question
what did we think of
how did you approach that question how
did you break it down
and then you should think how was i
supposed to have approached that
question
how should i have broken it down and how
should i have answered it
this is the most important part because
this is where metacognition
plays the biggest role you’re thinking
about your thinking
this is where you’re changing your
thinking to make yourself the better
learner
this reflective part of the cycle
is where you realize and your ways of
thinking and you’re able to improve your
critical thinking skills
and thus become the better thinker and
then become the better
learner and soon once you go through the
metacognitive cycle
and spade your knowledge of this concept
will grow it’ll evolve over time and
that’s the goal isn’t it
to understand that concept to
be able to remember it to be able to
create and evolve from it
now let’s put spade into action shall we
a few years ago i started learning how
to play the violin
you know how it is in the beginning your
kid comes home and he or she is like
mom and dad i saw this awesome thing at
school and
i want to learn how to play the violin
and you think
oh my god i thought the days of losing
sleep over this child was over
now this but then you agree
and the playing starts that was the same
thing that happened
in my house and soon once i started
playing
i was ready for my biggest hardest song
ever twinkle twinkle little stars and
don’t laugh
this was a serious task so
i use spade i for spotted my task which
was to
learn the song twinkle twinkle little
stars on the violin
then i planned i first recognized my
strengths and weaknesses
what did i already know and what i
didn’t know then i used my strategies
i use space repetition to learn the
notes
to learn the rhythms and the finger
patterns on the violin
then i use experiential learning to
watch someone a little bit more
experienced
play the song on their violin and i took
notes on their strategies like vibrato
and finger placement and then
i played it myself
and soon i assessed myself i had my
violin teacher
look over me and tell me what i was
doing right and what i was doing wrong
then i took everything together and i
learned
and i learned to become the better
violinist
i i knew what i was doing and i knew
what i had to do
to make my song sound better and i
evolved
and i evolved my learning i became a
better violinist
in our current world it’s not
enough to just study something anymore
we have to learn the why and the what
the why and the how behind everything
because the what is not
important in order to better ourselves
and
our community we must learn to connect
the concepts
and that we learn and connect and create
new concepts to better our world in
order to do this
we must learn and we must learn right
so the next time you’re learning how to
play chess or
how to do a backhand serve use spade
think about spade spot plan
assess adapt and evolve because now
is the time for you to own your learning
thank you