Being aware of your own thoughts, strategies, feelings and actions and their effects on others is what metacognition is about. It’s about knowing what you know and don’t know. The ability to take the balcony view, to look down upon yourself and reflect on your behaviour, ask internal questions and develop mental maps and plans […]

“We have had the posters and logos up on the wall for two years and there has been no improvement.” These were the words of a Principal in Singapore after they had identified and displayed the new school values, dispositions and skills they wanted students to learn and adopt. Passively hoping students will learn such […]

Take a moment to reflect on your current students. Do some of them rush to get their work done? Is there an unwritten belief that being the first finished is better than doing their best? Do many of them put in the minimum effort instead of working towards excellence? Are you constantly seeing sloppy mistakes? […]

According to Ron Ritchhart, seeing ourselves through our students’ eyes is the key to being a great model for thinking. He describes two types of modelling in the classroom. The first is explicit modelling. This is when you are demonstrating and showing a process or procedure that you want the student to adopt. The second […]

Persistence is the ability to stick to a task, especially when the going gets tough. It is being able to hang in there and keep going when a task becomes challenging, never giving up and keeping on going. Do your students say often say, “It’s too hard,” so they don’t have to think any further? […]