Goal: mastering the language, the importance of Metacognition

As we embark on the last stage of the exam preparation process with our Y11 and Y13 students before they carry out their public exams, I stopped to reflect on what I expect my students to have achieved after 5/7 years of language learning.

My goal, as from Y7 has always been for my students to achieve fluency in the target language (mastery of vocabulary and structures to communicate effectively), while learning about the target culture, but also to make them independent and reflective learners in the process. Achieving these goals, I believe, will make them successful in their GCSE and AS/ALevel exams. 

How do we make our students independent learners?

Following Rosenshine’s principles, firstly by providing good models of language and tasks needed for their exam. This means, not only modelling language but also modelling how to tackle a 150 word task or a literature essay at ALevel. Silvia Bastow and Sonja Fedrizzi have written extensively about Modelling the thought process when tackling a written task. Inspired by these two educators, I created this video for my students before their mocks. 

We must also model the learning process in our lessons by carrying out lots of retrieval practice, interleaving topics and/or structures and providing structured/scaffolded practice. Most importantly, it is essential to explain students why we do the activities we do and how these tasks will help them encode information into the long term memory (learning), so that they get involved in and own their learning process.

The idea is that by talking about the activities we do in lessons, we model learning techniques that students can reflect upon and eventually apply themselves independently.  

This is a huge task that requires lots of reflection embedded in lessons. These are some of the questions I ask students in my lessons: How do we learn?  Have you been in a situation that you thought you had done lots of revision but did not do well? Why didn't you well? Is just reading material over and over again, good enough to learn vocabulary/structures? What alternatives do you have? What do we do in lessons to help you master the vocabulary and structures? What of these techniques can you try at home? How can you do retrieval practice/ self-testing at home? How can you practise listening, reading, writing or speaking?

This reflection is the first step to developing metacognition (the power to reflect on our own learning process, identify gaps and plan a strategy to fill such gaps and move forward). 

Metacognition leads to independent learning and is key to experiencing success, which is a great motivator in any learner. 

How to start the metacognition process to achieve independence?

Via powerful feedback and the setting of high expectations.  Feedback given to students should not be just a mark but a way to identify gaps in knowledge and suggest little steps to tackle such gaps, while providing the opportunity to reflect on performance with the setting of own targets. 

When setting targets and designing a course of action to tackle gaps and move forwards, students can then use the repertoire of learning modelled strategies used in everyday lessons. I like calling feedback, feedforward. This involves adopting a positive relationship with mistakes. Mistakes are good! They are the first step to learning.

In my experience, students tend to be overconfident when assessing their knowledge and skills and tend to revise what they are good at, which explains the feeling of "but I revised lots and still I did not do well". Feedback is a good reality check for students to learn what the real gaps are and what they need to test themselves on, using our modelled learning techniques. This means knowing how to develop/test the micro skills leading to a good performance in MFL: listening, reading, writing, speaking, grammar, vocab/structure learning, not just recalling vocabulary in isolation! At this point having a revision schedule, provides a clear path for students to set themselves targets and devise their own strategy, based on a trusted, modelled repertoire of techniques. I do this via Padlet

Power Tools to develop Metacognition in our students

These tools or techniques have been adapted from the wonderful book Powerful Teaching by Pooja K. Agarwal and Patrice M. Bain and I use  to embed Metacognition in my lessons. These tools are closely interlinked to Feedback and Retrieval Practice as starting points to reflect on our learning and moving forward:

• To provide planned breaks within lessons for silent self-retrieval practice . I do this by carrying our In my own words time. Somewhere within lessons I stop carrying out the normal tasks and ask: Can you explain this grammatical rule in your own words? Students may write the rule in MWBs or just share orally with a partner. Or, you have 5 minutes to write down, from memory, as many structures learned today and last week, again using MWBs to check for understanding.

• To plan self-reflection opportunities, after self-retrieval practice in lessons. You have 10 minutes to write down as many sentences/structures as possible from the topic of Free Time in Spanish. After the 10 minutes elapse. What could you remember? Could you share with a partner? Are you happy with what you could remember? Do you need to revise this topic again? How? Set yourself a target as part of your homework today. 

• To help tool one, I use Retrieval Cards  every other lesson with specific translations from English into Spanish, to be completed by students, based on past topics as well as recent ones. I normally use 10 translations. Students translate, in silence, as much of the 10 sentences in the Retrieval Card, from memory. Then, I allow students to look at their notes/sentence builders to look up those structures they could not remember on the spot. Students highlight the structures they could not retrieve on their own, and set up a target, as part of their homework, to revise these and tackle the gap. A few days later, I carry out a very similar Retrieval Card to see what has changed. 

• To use Metacognition Sheets after a unit/topic is taught. This is a normal self-assessment sheet: I know the verbs to describe my holidays but with space for students to actually write down answers from memory.  Then, again, I provide reflection time, alone or in pairs: could I remember lots? why not? what do I need to revise? Students then provide a personal target as part of their homework to deal with this gap.

• Write, leave and retrieve technique. After we go through several activities in a lesson, students write what they know, while it is still fresh in the working memory. Then they leave it, and after 10 or 15 minutes, I ask students to retrieve the same information. How much could they remember when it was not so fresh? What does that tell them? How are they going to close the gap?

These tools empower my students by sparking a conversation about their own learning and encouraging them to make a judgement of learning. 

I train students to differentiate between what they know versus what they do not know and provide them with a repertoire of techniques/steps for them to independently use to take ownership of their learning and do something about knowledge/skills they do not know or can't master yet!  

For MFL, the added complication is that students need not just to know content, like in other subjects, but to use such content spontaneously via different skills, hence the importance to practise the micro skills of listening, reading, writing, speaking and to model how to put the language together in an oral / written task. In other words, doing just Quizlet will not make students write/ speak in a MFL, they will need strategies to practise these skills. 

Metacognition allows students to prioritise learning and experience success so they are open to learning more! 

Metacognition is about not just getting information in their heads, but expect students to get information out from their learning, spontaneously, hence, helping students to encode information into the long-term memory: Learning independently.