Mindfulness is a practice I integrate into my everyday teaching. Guiding students to practice the skill of living in the moment supports students abilities to think about their own thinking while learning. In the article, Metacognition by Nancy Chick explores the higher order thinking skill of Metacognition while discovering and learning problem solving approaches.
Teaching the art of metacognition requires students to look at complex situations while reflecting on their own abilities. Students who are presented with arduous tasks may pause and think about what effective way(s) to approach the problem and why. Teaching reading, particularly in the High school years students, is often charged with the task of explaining how they came to their point while reflecting on how they got there. Meaningful questioning exercises students know how connecting what they know about a particular topic to what they hope to learn about a subject. More so, guiding students to discover their errors and why those errors occurred also builds metacognitive skills. This practice can be connected to any content area in almost any disciplines.
Guiding students to recognize what skills they are stronger and weaker may shape how they acquire information. For instance, if students realize they learn best while reading students may initiate learning tasks that are visually centered. This newly acquired skill may then be scaffolded and connected to something they already know.
Overall, it is important to recognize that teaching metacognition should be explicitly taught however this art should be practiced daily in order to apply it to academic, social and even emotional circumstances.
Theory to Practice 