Building content & character with metacognition
Best practices from Riverside School, India
I am currently intern at Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India. I’ve been observing sessions from pre-K to Grade 7 for about 10 days. What struck me is the ability students have to reflect on their experience, and how it builds learning and socio-emotional intelligence.
Metacognition, or « thinking about thinking » lays at the core of Riverside’s pedagogy, and is practiced on a daily basis. This tool is easy to implement in the classroom: it requires no extra resources (except a bit of time) and you can do it on your own even if your colleagues don’t. It also reinforces the other skills of the students, be it on a cognitive or on a social and emotional level. In my opinion, metacognition is a booster for everything else you do it class.
At Riverside School, metacognition is part of the daily agenda, right from the start. Here is how it’s done, with concrete examples from the classrooms.
Becoming aware of one’s skills - the learner’s mindset
Constantly giving and receiving feedback
Throughout the day, children have multiple occasions to receive feedback, and to give feedback to their peers, both oral and written.
During a buddy interaction, younger and older students get together for an activity. For example, a 6th Grader will teach something to a 2nd Grader. Or a 1st Grader will showcase his knowledge about a subject for a public of 5th Graders. At the end of the interaction, buddies write feedback for each other.
In Grade 7, students comment and edit the work of their peers. The teacher also requires that they give advice for they friends to improve.
When asking for people to volunteer to do a presentation on behalf on the entire class, to showcase their learning, teachers ask students either to nominate their peers or to volunteer themselves. In each case, they have to justify their choices by naming the qualities of the designated person.
Students are often asked to show their learning, be it in front of their peers, teachers, parents or a jury of professionals. When Grade 8 presented their work on innovative products based on chemical reactions between acids and bases, the « sharks » were not compliants. Though one of them recognized that « they are young and still exploring with their research, but as I am in business, I can see the potential ».
What impressed me is not only the frequency of the process to give and receive feedback, but the quality of the feedback given by the students, and the high expectations put on them. Teachers manage to be kind and still challenge the children to aim higher, not satisfied with middle quality.
What I see here is the work of the students regarded not as the work of helpless little children, but as the work of promising, if not already competent, people.
Expliciting one’s thinking strategy
« Why are you counting how many answers are right or wrong? It’s just learning! It’s ok if it’s wrong! »
Once again, I’ve seen this posture repeteadly accross the grades. When correcting an exercice, teachers are not only interested in hearing the right answer from the students, but in hearing about their strategies. Often, after having one student telling the correct answer, the teacher would ask: « Who was wrong? Why are you wrong? »
And students raise their hands. Being wrong is not shameful. It is accepted as being part of the process of learning.
Sometimes, we can see that different strategies lead to the same correct answer. Or that a good strategy leads to a wrong answer. By making the students expliciting the strategies more than the final results, the teacher is able to understand better the children.
Closing the loop and evaluating one’s own learning in the rubric sheet
At the end of each session, in each Grade, the class closes the loop. They revisit what has been done, what they learnt, and what is important to remember. Questions of the teacher also include the purpose of the activities: « why did I ask you to do this task? why are we learning about this? ».
At the end of each day, one hour is also dedicated to closing the loop - or consolidation. Grade 3 students receive a work sheet that help them remember about each session: how did they feel? what did they learn? what is the new vocabulary? etc.
Auto-evaluation is another key to help students become mindful and independant learners. For example, the rubric sheet helps them to evaluate their skills with a detailed scale for each subject. On a monthly basis, they evaluate their level and give themselves goals in order to improve.
Reflections also enable students to become aware of how they learn, what they enjoy learning and the sense they see in learning.
Becoming aware of one’s emotions
At Riverside School, the curriculum is explicitely based on developing content AND character. Thus, emotions are welcome in the classroom. Developping the emotional skills of the students is one of the five investments of the curriculum (along with the cognitive, physical, social and spiritual investments). In all classroom of Keystage 2 (Grade 3 to 7), there is a mindmap showing the goals of the grade in all five investments.
Students learn to think about their emotions, to articulate them for themselves and to communicate them. Thinking and talking about emotions is done by many different ways, both formal (dedicated sessions and worksheets), and informal (daily way of communicating with the children).
Each morning, each grade gathers for a « conglom ». During congloms, students get to share personal stories, feelings, opinions and ideas, or demonstrate their skills. This creates bonding among the students as well as between the teachers and the students, and participate to build a safe environment. Conglom is a way to begin the day by being positive and enjoying being together.
Reflections worksheet are not only about learning, but also about emotions. Time is taken for students to reflect about what they love, the way they react when facing emotions, etc. This is done right from pre-K : even when the child is not enable to write, drawing and explaining his drawing is already a way to reflect on one’s emotions and reactions.
Grade 6 students take a « character’s exam ». This test is a way for them to have a deeper reflection about the person they are and who they want to become. In Grade 7, students were asked to review their « character’s exam » from Grade 6 and to compare their answers to who they are one year after. When they shared their thoughts about their evolution, they were very mindful about their own growth, and how this kind of reflection serves them: « Last year, I was more problem oriented. This year, I’m more solution-oriented. I don’t worry so much about problems anymore, I try to find solutions. »
In my opinion, this emphasis on socio-emotional growth not only participate in the personal development of each students, but also builds a safe and positive school environment. Students are mature, and the way their interact with each other reflect their high emotional intelligence. Of course, they are not angels but still regular children: chitchatting in the classroom happens, disturbing sessions happens, fighting happens, teacher shouting happens. All of this happens like in any other school (I guess), which is just a community of human beings with they strengths and weaknesses. However, the strength of this community is the ability to solve problems quickly and in a way that nurtures the personal grow of each individual.
Metacognition is a catalyst of learning
Metacognition and introspection as done at Riverside School mix the development of content and character. Content and character are like two legs of the same body of learning, and metacognition is the fuel that makes it move faster.
Reflectings on emotions and nurturing safe and deep relationships creates a positive environment. This positive environment enhances learning. Reflecting on learning deepens it, and also enable students to enjoy more : they become aware that their time at school is not wasted, aware of how much they learn and grow.
To me, the best proof of the efficacy of such methods is not so much the good results of the school (top 5 in India), but the atmosphere of strong maturity and confidence that I observed daily in the classrooms.
