Developing Metacognition Knowledge to increase Motivation: 9 simple strategies

 Motivation and most specifically, intrinsic motivation, the desire to learn and do well which comes from within the students, is the key to any extremely successful learning journey. 

There are many ways we can help students find their lost motivation: 

Via an achievable, ambitious and engaging curriculum, avoiding cognitive overload and maximising success, by framing success in the classroom via specific, success criteria and examples and non-examples of what success looks like for languages; by framing failure as a natural and expected step in learning and, therefore, as an opportunity to get better, creating a safe culture in the classroom. 

Of course, we can help develop motivation via external sources, which will help create a "I can do and will do" culture in the long term via praise, gamification and real-purpose communication tasks. We can also offer a wide range of extra curricular activities and trips and use culture as a tool to develop a love for languages.

However, the most important tool to increase intrinsic motivation when learning a language, or any subject, in my opinion, is to develop metacognition knowledge, that is the ability for students to reflect on their work and ability and use a wide range of strategies that will help them to carry out specific tasks, in other words, to learn better, by assessing and evaluating their performance, measure it against success criteria, identifying the gaps and improving upon past performances.

Successful learners do this naturally, however, many of a pupils, especially pupils with SEN and those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds need to be explicitly taught metacognition skills. 

How can we do this in the classroom?  

These are some of my favourite metacognition tasks I carry out in my lessons, some really simple but very effective!

1. Pausing and giving thinking/reflection time throughout the lesson. At some point in the lesson, after several learning tasks, stop the lesson and ask students to write down, without looking at any material,  what they can retrieve from memory within the lesson.  OUTformation instead of INformation: what can students give you OUT of their brains?  They can write this in their books or just in MWBs.  Then ask them to look at the learning material, knowledge organiser, lesson notes etc.. and ask them to identify 2 gaps in their knowledge, this could be, 2 structures they couldn't retrieve, 2 concepts, and ask them to set up a personal h/w task to go over these 2 elements as part of their h/w this week. Do this weekly or even in each lesson and start your next lesson asking students, as part of their starter task, to retrieve this knowledge. Could they do it? Why? Why not? Reflect with the students. 

2. Refer to and model success criteria in all your lessons.  There are many success criteria within the specific skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking in MFL. I tend to focus on the productive skills in a general way, as these tend to motivate students greatly, in my opinion. We use our 5 Magic Powers. We make reference to them as from Y7 and explicitly teach students how a model answer looks like after incorporating this. We use the 5 Magic Powers in conjunction with the Rule of 3: providing information with 3 verbs where appropriate, using the 5 Magic Powers. Then, every time you check for understanding, especially, via the use of MWBs, before showing their answer, again, pause, and ask the students to reflect on what they have written: do their answers fulfill the criteria of success?

3. At KS4, do the above in conjunction with the GCSE Mark Schemes for Speaking and Oral exams. Share the mark scheme, analyse it, explain what it means and model it, with an example and non-example: where in the model text can you identify the success elements of the Mark Scheme? To make this task more accessible to our student we link the GCSE Mark Scheme to our 5 Magic Powers: where in the mark scheme can you apply the 5 Magic Powers?

4. Share your thinking process with the students by modelling how to tackle a task before they do it independently. Divide your thinking in small chunks and take them in your journey with you, with the "We do, you do" technique. 

5. To do the above, when showing your thinking, involving students with skillful questions, in order to teach metacognitive regulation,  think about the stages of Planning the task, Monitoring the work through the task and Evaluating the strategy.

Planning the task, Y8 example "Ok, so, we need to write down 90 words on the topic of Free Time, including what I used to do in the past and what I do know.  Before I start writing, I am going to plan what possible hobbies I am going to use for the past and what hobbies I am going to use for now. Can anyone help me on hobbies I could use?  Can anyone tell me how I say "in the past" ?  What about "but now"? Ok, now I need to think of how I am going to write my sentences. The bullet point says I need to mention what I used to do before.  Ok, how do I say in Spanish "I used to" Remember we have been practising this structure for a few lessons now. (PAUSE, and using Cold Calling). Excellent, "solía"  So I am going to write "solía + the hobbies" in my planning sheet.  Now I have to think about how I a going to say what I normally do. What options do I have? for example, I may use what I like to do or I tend to do normally.  How would I say that? (PAUSE, and using Cold Calling). Excellent, "me gusta/ suelo +infinitive". Let me write it in my planning sheet. Now,  I am going to plan about how I am going to incorporate the 5 Magic Powers in this writing so that I get the highest marks. MP 1: tenses, that has been covered already, MP2: opinions, how can I give opinions?  What type of opinions? let's write a few examples, MP3: reasons, which reasons can I use for this task? Can you give me ideas? MP4: talking about someone else, how can I incorporate other people’s opinions on my choice of hobbies? I can say: “I like singing but my brother says it is too boring” how would we say that? Can you give me more examples? MP5: using high impact expressions, remember these are the really fancy expressions we can use to show off, can you give me a couple?  Ok, now I have my plan on what to write with examples written on my planning sheet, I can start the task. Can you start writing your own version using our plan?”  This technique is effective as it also allows you to carry out retrieval practice.

6. Teach monitoring skills as part of your thinking process: “ok, you have been writing for about 20 minutes, can you stop for a second? I will need to see how my writing is going against my plan. Have I included everything I wanted? Is my writing accurate? What is the most important part of the sentence? (PAUSE and cold call), yes, the verbs.  Are my verbs correct? I am going to stop and I am going to check that the verbs I have used so far are correct and that I am applying my plan”

7. Teach Evaluating skills after the task is completed: “OK, so now I am going to think how effective my strategy to tackle this task was today so it can be more effective next time.  Did I address all the bullet points in the task? Did I apply the 5 Magic Powers successfully? What helped me to do so? How did the plan help me when I was stuck? Could I use this strategy again? How useful was to check my work through the task? Did I pick up any mistakes when I checked throughout? What did I find most challenging in the task? So, based on this challenge, what do I need to focus on for next lesson ?” At this point, with the help of the questions, students can identify gaps (most of the time these refer to accuracy) and can set up a personal target to carry out during h/w for next lesson. Teaching Planning, Monitoring and Evaluating skills, can be used for any task and any skill, including listening and reading too. 

8. Once a task has been marked/ corrected with feedback, make sure you plan similar tasks in the near future, each one built upon the previous task so that students can frame progress against past performance: self-reference.  In our case, students at KS3 will need to carry out an end of unit test before the Christmas break. This would involve a 90 word piece of writing. This means we carry out around 3 "snapshots of writing" with an open book, each one building upon the previous one, which students will complete throughout the term, in preparation for their final assessment, done from memory. By the time they carry out this assessment, using their metacognition knowledge, students will have had the opportunity to self-reference their work, seeing how their tasks have been improving step by step and enjoy their progress over time.

9. Teach students how to revise. This is particularly helpful for KS4. For this we carry out learning schedules using Padlet. See Example here. This learning schedule, not only tells them what to revise and how, but models the techniques and tools they need to master the different skills in the exam, while inviting them to reflect on their own performance and apply their metacognitive knowledge.

By using the techniques, students, not us, start framing success by themselves, most important, they also start experiencing success and consequently getting motivated from their own learning experience while they become independent learners.

How to survive OFSTED under the new Framework

Last Monday we got the call. Ofsted was coming home for our routine inspection, which was due. My school, Princes Risborough School, an Upper School or All-Ability School inside a selective area with Grammar Schools, had been awarded a grade 2 (Good) under the old Ofsted framework.

Since then, we have been working extremely hard to improve all aspects of the school: Behaviour and Attendance, Curriculum and Teaching, Achievement, Inclusion and Personal Development & Well-being, the five areas judged on a 5-tier scale by the new framework, goodbye to single overall grades!

The 5 grades that can be awarded for each focus area are: Exceptional (blue), Strong Standard (Dark Green), Expected Standard (Bright Green), Needs Attention (Orange), and Urgent Improvement (Red). 

Although I cannot comment yet on the results of our inspection it was very positive and we are extremely proud of what we have achieved. I thought I would share my experience of the process under the new Framework from the point of view of MFL.

Goodbye to Deep Dives

Subject Deep Dives are part of the past. Although, some Middle Leaders had a meeting with the inspectors, this was as a group, and not subject specific and without the depth expected in the old subject Deep Dive. The pressure has now shifted to the SLT who must provide evidence of achievement and curriculum for your subject, under the area of Curriculum & Teaching and Achievement. As a Middle leader in the past, part of me missed the deep dive, after all, who best knows a subject than the Head of Department? However, this has taken an enormous pressure off the shoulders for teachers. 

It is then vital that the SLT know the school curriculum well for all subjects. In preparation for this task, all middle leaders at my school worked on One Page Subject Summaries. What is that you want SLT and ultimately Ofsted know about your subject?  The Subject summary include:

• Three KEY things I want people to know and say about my subject area
• Our Current Wildly Important Goal
• Our Big Intent and Curriculum, including how the latter builds up throughout KS3 up to KS5 and our rationale behind what we choose to do in the classroom
• Implementation of the curriculum: how is this implemented? which pedagogical framework is implemented under? Why?
• Historical data and 3 year trends for KS4 and KS5.
• Impact:Most recent data 
• Narrative: What's your story? My favourite part, what has your journey been like? Why? What is your vision and your goals? Where is the deparment in the journey? 

In preparation for OFSTED

From my experience these are elements that Middle Leaders need to make sure it is happening in preparation for the "any time phone call"

• Expected and consistent set of routines within the whole MFL department and the whole school to ensure a good learning environment: How do all teachers greet students? how do all teachers secure attention in the classroom? do all students do a Do Now task and an exit ticket task in all lessons/subjects? In which format? Do student use chromebooks for your subject? When are students expected to open their chromebooks?  If students do not respond to the tasks as expected, are all teachers consistently applying the school behaviour management protocol? (In our case this is Warn, Move, Remove). These routines need to be embedded in all lessons showing clear consistency for our visitors.
• The one page Subject Summary (explained above).
• Consistency of teaching and pedagogical approach among all members of the MFL department. In our case this is a Lexicogrammar approach embedded in Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction and our school PRS CORE.  Are all teachers teaching roughly the same topic within the curriculum for a given year? What does a typical MFL lesson look like at KS3/ KS4/ KS5 at the different stages of the learning journey? Does assessment take place both, as low stakes tests and as summative assessments in all languages and in all year groups? In which shape and form?

During the visit (two days)

As a Lead Practitioner in my trust I was in charge of a Learning Walk with two inspectors visiting a wide range of English and MFL lessons. In my experience of this learning walk and observation of my own lessons, these are the elements that inspectors wanted to see in all the observed lessons:

• Detailed, annotated sitting plans. In fact they would ask me to provide these for each lesson they visited during our learning walk. So, these need to be embedded as part of the school "good practice" routine and be ready to share with the inspectors as they walk in your classroom.  They need to include information of who is a PP student or a student with SEN, specifying what type of special need, who is an EAL student or Higher Prior Achievers and a brief summary of which strategies are used in the lesson to support each of these students.  This does not need to be in detail but something like: scaffold, use small chunks, checking with name, needs prompting, avoid cold calling etc.. The inspectors will want to see inclusion in every lesson they observe and how well your students' needs are met to ensure a safe, secure and belonging  classroom environment where every child can thrive. I would suggest having corridors of PP/ students with SEN in your sitting plans so that you can access your most vulnerable students effectively. 
• The big one: CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING constantly throughout the lesson, taking into account the needs of all your students and in particular your most vulnerable pupils, as stated by your sitting plan. This is the big element to make sure it is happening in all lessons; and considering that our visitors may only come to a lesson for a few minutes, it has to be skillfully planned so that you can demonstrate this happens within the time they are in your lesson.   Plan questions skilfully before the lesson. These can be in the target language, or in English, regarding vocabulary, grammatical concepts or regarding an exam skill feature. You can check for understanding in different ways.
• Cold calling, not just taking answers from volunteers, although accepting a few answers from your eager students is also good practice! 
• Think, pair, share, even for very short periods like 10 or 20 seconds.
• Using a quick Google Form in a particular section of your lesson, showing statistic results in real time. Mentimeter or Padlet could also be a good way to do this.
• Exit tickets
• Mini White Boards, my favourite way in conjunction with Flippity or Wheel of Names. You can use use physical small MWBs or if using chromebooks/ laptops, you can use Canva!
• When I was observed with my Y11 class, my lesson consisted of retrieving vocabulary/ structures learned in a previous first lesson on the topic of School with MWBs and Flippity. I had skilfully prepared, in Flippity, a wide range of entries showing the beginning of a sentence that students had to translate (retrieval practice). Student also had access to  their digital version of their Sentence Builders in case my most vulnerable pupils needed to use it, although the expectation was they wouldn't. The entries included expressions like: "lessons start/ lessons finish/ for lunch I bring/ Break is at etc.." and after translate these, students had to extend the sentence applying our Rule of 3 (using at least 3 sentences/ verbs, applying our 5 Magic Powers, nicely displayed in my classroom). 
• The second big one: ADAPTIVE/ RESPONSIVE TEACHING and HAVING HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR ALL STUDENTS by EXPECTING STUDENTS TO THINK HARD. Inspectors wanted to see examples of this happening in all lessons, paired with checking for understanding.  How do you carry out adaptive teaching?  When you check for understanding with all your students, what patterns can you notice? Which are the misconceptions? Spot these, then STOP the lesson. Ask students about the patterns you noticed: "Excellent answers, but I have noticed that some of you wrote "Ayer termino el colegio", (write it on the board), what is the issue with this sentence?" Use cold calling after allowing students to think about the answer and continue checking for understanding and making them think hard: " how should it be? What is the past tense ending for -ar verbs in Spanish? what is the past tense ending for -er/ir verbs?, let's practise with another sentence so that you can show me you can remember the concept". In other words: LOOK FOR PATTERNS/MISCONCEPTIONS, STOP, RETEACH, CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING AGAIN and MAKE STUDENTS THINK HARD. REFRAIN YOURSELF FROM GIVING THEM THE ANSWER STRAIGH AWAY, GUIDE THEM SO THEY GIVE IT TO YOU!  Finally, have high expectations: "Ok the sentence says, "lessons start at" I need you to translate the sentence and then to extend it using our rule of 3 and using three tenses"
• High levels of engagement from the students so that your lesson demonstrates inclusion for all students. If all the above takes place in the lesson, you are providing all the ingredients for students to feel safe, motivated and supported, therefore they should be engaged. However, some classes are more challenging than others so, reward your students to boost their external motivation and engagement in order to help them, ultimately, develop intrinsic motivation.  Make sure students experience success via scaffolded, guided practice with support and reward them when they align with you. When I was observed, I asked my students to keep a tally of their correct answers in their MWB as three correct answers would get them an Achievement Point. I do this in every lesson and I religiously enter my APs in Arbor every day! MFL teachers are consistently within the group of teachers giving the biggest amount of APs in my school! and that is effective!!

Although stressful, I had a very positive experience of Ofsted and I enjoyed it, somehow. These are strategies that should be embedded in all lessons at all times but really stood out as game changers from my own Ofsted experience. Good news is: THIS IS WHAT WE NORMALLY DO AS MFL TEACHERS!!  Good luck if you receive the call!!