This month's CPD video focuses on using metacognitive strategies to help develop reading skills and literacy and is based around a presentation given by Deborah Butler. 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.
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. What are you hoping to learn from this video?
2. What are the best things to keep in mind whilst watching the video so that you maximise learning?
3. How does one's style of thinking impact the usefulness of educational videos for learning?
This Month's CPD Video
Post-Video Metacognitive Questions
1. How did your own attitude impact the amount you learnt from the video?
2. What were the strengths and weaknesses of your approach to learning from this video?
3. What were you actually doing with your mind whilst you watched the video?
Further Reflection Questions
What metacognitive strategies did you learn about in that seminar?
Why might metacognition be particularly effective in developing reading and literacy skills?
How will your learning from this video be applied in your own teaching practice?
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.
All in all, this is a great way to bring metacognition into your lessons: one final benefit to consider is that the young people you work with have a life-time of learning from videos ahead of them – the metacognitive skills you develop in them by using this resource (or simply using your own metacognitive questions in lessons) will serve them for the rest of their lives.
