Webster’s Dictionary defines metacognition as the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. It is something students do during the learning process without even being aware of it. Some of the ways student use metacognition in science include thinking about what they already know about a concept or phenomenon, identifying what they need to know to figure out a puzzling phenomenon, figuring out how to best explain their thinking, and monitoring how their initial ideas change during or after a lesson or investigation.

Because metacognition can be thought of as an internal conversation inside a student’s head, it is assumed that students do this on their own. However, students’ metacognitive abilities improve when teachers explicitly teach metacognitive strategies. Research has shown that teaching metacognitive strategies can be linked to improved student achievement (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 1999).

Formative assessment probes support metacognition since the questions are intrinsically interesting and engage students in thinking. Conversely, teaching metacognitive strategies support the use of formative assessment probes. Since a formative assessment probe is used by the teacher to examine students’ thinking in order to make better informed instructional decisions, teaching metacognitive strategies students can use with the probes provides deeper insight into students’ ideas. In this month’s column, I share three metacognitive strategies that can be used with any formative assessment probe.

Strategy #1: Think Alouds. When presented with a probe, students first think internally about the concept or phenomenon. After having a private “conversation” inside their head, students share their thinking out loud with a partner. One student thinks out loud while their partner listens. They then switch roles. After each partner has shared their thinking, partners discuss the similarities and differences in their ideas, ask further questions of each other, and decide whether to change any of their initial ideas. This strategy helps students explicate and organize their thinking before constructing an explanation to share with the class or the teacher.

Strategy #2: Where Did My Idea Come From? Students do not come to the classroom as blank slates. They already possess ideas that come from a variety of sources. They may have accrued ideas that came from prior activities, including lessons from previous grades, that may have resulted in partially formed ideas or interpretations that were incongruent with the intent of the lesson. They may have picked up ideas from talking with family and friends. Daily observations and interactions around the neighborhood and in their natural world may affect their thinking. Picture and print books, movies, television shows, and the internet are constantly bombarding students with information that they sometimes make sense of in their own way. All of these sources contribute to the preconceptions students may have related to a concept or phenomenon. Helping students identify where their initial ideas came from not only supports their explanation construction, it also provides data that a teacher can use to inform ways to address students’ alternative or partially formed ideas. Students may initially be unaware of where their ideas originated. By providing a chart in the classroom that students can refer to may prompt their thinking about what contributed to their ideas. Table 1, page 15, is an example of a chart teachers can post in the classroom to help students identify where their initial ideas came from that informed their response to the probe. This chart can be modified to fit the grade level you teach.

The Apple in the Dark probe (Figure 1; Keeley 2018) addresses an important disciplinary core idea in grades 3–5: An object can be seen when light reflected from its surface enters the eye (NGSS Lead States 2013). When this probe is used as an initial elicitation, have students refer to the Where Did My Idea Come From? chart and include the source of their idea in their initial explanation. For example, a student who selects “C: You will see the apple after your eyes have had time to adjust to the darkness, but you will not see the red color,” may describe how they have experienced this at night when they are in their dark bedroom. After the light has been turned off, they can’t see anything. But after a minute or so their eyes adjust and they can start to see things in the room, but not the color or the details. This is an indication that the student has not experienced total darkness and does not realize that there is some ambient light entering the room that allows them to “see in the dark.”

Another student may have described an activity they did in a previous science class where they observed how their pupils widen in the dark and shrink when the light is turned on. This student may think the eye is the activator of vision by opening up in the dark, and fail to recognize that the wider pupil is allowing more light into the eye.

Another student might describe books and television shows about animals that have large eyes so they can see in the dark. These students also fail to recognize the connection between light and sight, but instead of personal experience or activities they misinterpreted in school, their idea was influenced by information from books and media.

A student who chooses the best answer, “A: You will not see the red apple, regardless of how long you are in the room” might cite evidence from an observation, explaining how he or she was in a cave when the light was turned off. The teacher makes note of this student, planning to use him or her as a learning resource for others, by sharing their cave experience with the class.

Strategy #3: I Used to Think …But Now I Know … (Keeley 2016). Retrospective post-assessments provide an opportunity for students to recognize when they have experienced conceptual change. After a probe has been used as an initial elicitation, followed by instruction designed to address students’ initial ideas and move them toward the scientific way of thinking, students should have an opportunity to revisit the probe and answer it using the scientific evidence and conceptual understanding developed during the learning process. To help students reflect back on how their thinking has changed, have them fill in the blanks of “I used to think ____________ but now I know ___________________.” Additionally, the teacher can add: “This is what changed my thinking _______________________.” For example, a student’s reflection for the Apple in the Dark probe might be: “I used to think my eyes would adjust so I could see in total darkness, but now I know that light is needed in order to see something. What changed my thinking was the activity we did with the dark boxes. When there was no light, I couldn’t see the apple. When some light was let in, I could see the apple, but I couldn’t see the color. When a lot of light was let in, I could see the apple and the color. We then drew models that could be used to explain that you can’t see without light.”

Metacognition is not only the awareness of one’s thinking and learning, it is also the awareness that one is a thinker and learner. Formative assessment probes combined with metacognitive strategies help students “learn to think” and “think to learn.”