This month's CPD video focuses on cultivating a growth mindset, make sure you subscribe to this blog in order to be sent some free growth mindset teaching resources! Each month we link to a carefully selected lecture, presentation or documentary in order to help educators develop professionally; accompanying each video is a selection of metacognitive questions designed to help you get more from the video. The talk this session is based on was delivered by Carol Dweck at an event sponsored by Google.
Using metacognitive reflection questions before and after the videos you show your students is a straightforward way to foster metacognitive reflection. By engaging with the metacognitive questions below you can see for yourself how useful they are in helping to increase learning power!
For each question take a moment to think about the answer. When using this exercise in lessons it is best to use some form of ‘think, pair, share’ approach so that students share their reflections with the group – thus helping to ensure engagement.
Pre-Video Metacognitive Questions…
1. When watching educational videos: is it better for you to be thinking or just paying attention? Why?
2. When you're watching educational videos what helps you to remember what you learn from them??
3. What is the ideal way for a learner to approach an educational video in order to maximise learning?
This Month's CPD Video
Post-Video Metacognitive Questions
1. How did your own ability to concentrate impact the amount you learnt from the video?
2. What was the hardest concept to understand from that video?
3. How could you better plan, monitor, evaluate and regulate your own learning processes in relation to learning from educational videos?
Further Reflection Questions
Why might a growth mindset be beneficial to your students?
Can you think of any particular students that would be particularly benefited from a growth mindset?
How would you summarise the differences between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset?
How to Use Metacognitive Questions With Videos in Your Lessons
Using metacognitive question prompts at the start, middle and end of a video or documentary you show students in lessons activates each stage of the self-regulation cycle: planning, monitoring, evaluating and regulating.
We’ve created a simple PowerPoint tool that will facilitate your delivery of metacognitive questions in lessons whenever you use a video: regardless of the school subject or videos topic. It allows you to instantly generate metacognitive questions for each stage of the metacognition process using an integrated menu:
Student are then presented with one of thirty-six slides like the ones depicted below, each contained 3 of 108 questions aiming to trigger metacognitive reflection, awareness and knowledge:
You can download a free sample of the resource here – it’s perfectly easy to use in your lessons and requires no preparation. The demo version contains 6/36 slides (18/108 questions).
The full version contains the complete array of 108 questions and access to all 36 slides: this makes the resource almost infinitely reusable. Furthermore, unlike the demo version, the full version is fully editable so that teachers can add their own metacognitive questions. Click here to download the full version. If you are a membership plan holder please visit the Members Area to download it for free.