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Metacognitive reflection Metacognition is a term that describes thinking about one's thinking as a means of reflection. The goal is for students to think more about the process — how they approach writing, barriers to good writing and strategies that help them write successfully — instead of focusing only on content or rubric requirements. Metacognitive reflection can awaken students to be more aware of their thinking during writing, resulting in a deeper understanding of who they are as writers and of how to transfer their knowledge to any genre of writing. So what does metacognitive thinking on writing look like, and how can teachers build this type of reflection into writ- ing conferences? A whole-class conversation about the importance of metacognition is a good starting place, since students are often focused on assignments rather than their thinking while completing them. These strategies can help students become aware of their thinking while writing and are easy to incorporate in assignments. 6 activities to encourage metacognition • Keep a journal. Encourage students to take metacog- nitive breaks of two to three minutes during writing to record their thoughts. Describe your process to this point. What was a barrier to your writing? How did you over- come this? What do you think you could do to prevent this from occur- ring next time? These breaks can and should occur at different points in the writing process. • Record troubleshooting ideas. Encourage students to keep a list of strategies and ideas they have found successful in the past that they can use during writing to help them push through when they 're experiencing difficulty. • Write collaboratively. Provide opportunities for students to work on writing assignments together. Students can discuss why they are making the choices they make along the way. Thoughts can be addressed in comments in a Goo- gle Doc or on sticky notes placed on the student's paper. • Use graphic organizers. These can also serve as tools to guide students to think about their thinking while writ- ing and to identify successful strategies. The object is not to fill the entire graphic organizer but to provide multiple entry points to think about their thinking while writing. • Highlight papers. This strategy adds a visual compo- nent to reflection and opens opportunities for students to think about what leads to strong components of a piece and why other components are weaker. • Record post-writing thoughts. Writing a paragraph on the thought process during an assignment can be par- ticularly helpful for the big-picture process. What would you do differently if writing again? Why? What would you keep the same? Why? What strategies did you employ that worked well that you can use for future writing? Insights gathered from these metacognitive tools can carry over into writing conversations. In your next writing conferences, try adding some of the italicized questions to questions already commonly asked. • What do you like best about this writing? Why do you think this section is strong? What did you notice as you were writing this section? • Where did you struggle with this piece? Why did you struggle with this section? What could have helped you while writing this particular section? Let's review your list of troubleshooting ideas and strategies. What can you add to these? • Where is an area you took a risk or experimented with something new? Why did you decide to do something different here? Was it successful? Why or why not? If so, how could you incorporate this into other writing? • How do you feel about the piece overall? How did you feel about the overall process? Are there particular things in your learning environment or mindset that contrib- ute to successful writing? Identify one or two concrete strategies to use moving forward. Metacognition is an important step in writing instruction and where the real magic happens in learning. Students do need feedback on specific pieces of writing but should be given the opportunity to think beyond the product. This, and the opportunity to discuss their thinking, strengthens their writing not only in class but for years to come. This story originally appeared in Edutopia. "Metacognitive reflection can awaken students to be more aware of their thinking during writing, resulting in a deeper understanding of who they are as writers and how to transfer their knowledge to any genre of writing." 49 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 / J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 T