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