Saturday, September 26, 2009

Christine Balcarcel - Metacognition

Everyone has their own strategy on how to think about and organize new concepts. As I was thinking about how I was going to organize this post I realized that I was using metacognition to organize my thoughts and plan out the post before I even began writing. For me, thinking about how I am going to go about doing a task before I even get started, is extremely helpful. Other people however, may need to start a task and then adjust it as they go on, letting them visualize the actual task at hand. I think it is important to help students figure out which way works best for them in order to help them use their own strategy in order to learn new ideas and concepts. I remember when I was younger my teachers would have each student turn in an outline of the paper we were about to write before we even got started. For me this was really helpful because I knew exactly what I was going to write before I even got started, making writing the paper a breeze. On the otherhand, whenever we had an essay test in a class I struggled because I did not know how to organize my thoughts without writing an outline, and since all tests have a time limit I often did not have enough time to organize my thoughts before writing the paper.

When it comes to reading about a new topic, I am usually not able to just read about an entirely new concept and understand it. Usually, I will think about the concept and try to come up with examples and apply it to real life situations. This way I am able not only understand the topic, but I usually have an easier time remembering it.

I think that when introducing a new topic to students it is important to have them engaged and thinking and talking about the topic.

No comments:

Post a Comment