Document included in an Academic Success packet for residents working with peer mentors focusing on metacognitive skills.

1. Metacognitive Skills
The key to meaningful learning and outstanding grades
Successful students, regardless of their degree of intelligence, basically have three characteristics
that unsuccessful students do not. They are:
1. Successful students are aware of their thinking and know how they think impacts how they
learn.
2. Knowing this, successful students monitor their thinking, and
3. Successful students control their thinking, intentionally choosing and adapting strategies
to fit the learning task and goals.
That’s it. There is no magic, no special genes, nothing; just, metacognition. Metacognition, or
being aware of and thinking about your thinking, is crucial to successful learning and
consistently getting good grades.
Another aspect that often sets successful students apart from unsuccessful students is this:
• Successful students believe their successes are due to their effort and that failures are due
to aspects they can identify and change.
• They never let themselves believe they are incapable of doing well in school.
Becoming aware of your thinking
It may not be natural for you to think about your thinking. For some they learned it somehow in
the past. Others, like you, may not learn it until now. And regrettably, some may not ever learn it
because they do not try to.
1. The first step is to start. What did you think about when you read the information above?
It’s NOT what you read, but what you THOUGHT while you read.
a. For example, you READ “Successful students are aware of their thinking…” but you
may have THOUGHT, “how can you be aware of your thinking? What does that
mean?” as you read it?
b. So the first step is to pay attention to that “inner voice” or “self-talk” inside your
head while you read or study.
c. When you study, you may want to take a break after every paragraph or few
minutes of studying and ask yourself “what have I been thinking while I read or
studied?” This is a good way to get in the habit of thinking about your thinking!
2. One thing to note – multitasking, which is so prevalent today, often serves to make it
harder to be aware of your thinking. So it is better if you are not distracted by Facebook,
twitter, phone calls and texts, etc.

2. Monitoring and Controlling your thinking
3. The next step, as you become more aware of your thinking while you are studying, reading,
working on homework, etc. is to intentionally control and monitor your thinking. This
includes planning how you will think about and approach your learning activity. And while
you are involved in that activity, it means that you make sure you are aware of what you’re
thinking – even if that means taking breaks and asking yourself about your thoughts. It
also means evaluating your thinking and intentionally thinking about connections between
information. For example:
a. Before studying for an exam, you would plan how you will approach your study
session. You may know that the teacher will ask you to define key terms
(memorizing) as well as write a short essay (understanding the terms and how they
relate). This means different strategies.
i. You may ask yourself and think about what you already know about the
topic or how it might relate to things you already know.
ii. You may plan to use a mnemonic device to remember the key terms, and
practice matching them to definitions from the text.
iii. Then you may plan to use a concept map or mind map (or some other kind
of representation) with the key terms and show how they relate to each
other.
iv. Then you might ask yourself how the instructor might change the wording of
the definition to make it shorter, etc. and plan to use those for your
matching instead of the text-definitions.
v. You may also ask yourself, what questions would the teacher ask for the
essay question? What key terms are most important or most frequently
involved (the way the information is organized in the text may help)? What
relationships are crucial or most controversial? Then you may plan to
prepare and practice writing answers to those possible essay questions.
b. While you are working, you would monitor your thinking, asking yourself the
following questions and adjusting the way you study and learn accordingly:
i. How well do I understand the material?
ii. What other strategies (re-read, draw representations, etc.) or resources
(friends, classmates, instructor, online reference material, etc.) could I use
to help me understand something I don’t understand well?
iii. What are the key points or arguments being made?
iv. Am I concentrating enough on the material or is my mind “wandering off”?
v. Where is the author going with this? What is s/he going to talk about next?
vi. What is the most important information here and how is it related to the
rest of what I read or am about to read?
vii. If I were testing students on this to see if they really understood this, what
would I ask?
c. After your work, you would think about what you did well and not so well, what
strategies worked and what was not useful, etc. And you would try to articulate
your understanding in some way. These things help you evaluate your thinking.
For example, you might ask yourself:
i. Did using the concept map help? (or other strategy)

3. ii. Would anything have worked better” (what and how?)
iii. How could I summarize the information in my own words that would best
articulate my understanding?
iv. How would I explain this or teach this to someone else?
d. One final way of controlling your thinking is to consciously think about the new
material, determine if it is related to information you already know, and then
organize it in some meaningful way. This is called constructing knowledge and
meaning. For example you may ask yourself :
i. How is this related to what I already know?
1. Does it go against something I know or believe? How can I reconcile
that conflict?
2. Does it support something else I know or believe? How would I use
this to support or defend what I already know?
3. How does this change anything I currently think or know?
4. Does it relate to anything in other classes I am taking or have taken?
ii. How could I use this in different contexts/scenarios?
1. Could I apply this math formula to when I go shopping or comparing
the cost of things I buy online?
2. Could I apply this physics lesson to how I swing a bat in
baseball/softball or tackle someone in football?
3. Could I use the general way I solve a math problem to solve a
personal problem?
iii. Does this highlight or help me see something that I realize I do not know
enough about? What can I do to learn more about it?

4. Basic Metacognitive Skills
• Planning Related Questions:
o What is the purpose and nature of the task/environment?
 Memorizing
 Learning
 Applying
o How does this fit into the overall course, major, etc?
o What do I want/need to learn or what am I expected to learn?
o What do I already know about this?
o What resources does the text provide to aid understanding? (i.e. graphics, links,
vocabulary, etc.)
o What kind of information and strategies do I need?
 Memorization?
 Interpretation/Representation?
 Application and Problem solving?
 Creation?
o How much time and resources will I need?
Add your own Planning questions:
• Monitoring Related Questions:
o Do I have a clear understanding?
o Do the graphics, links, vocabulary words help me understand?
o Do I need to re-read anything?
o What is the author trying to say?
o What information is important here?
o Does the task make sense?
o Am I reaching my goals?
o Do I need to make changes?
o What is the author going to say next?
o What questions would experts ask to see if someone understands?
o What questions does this raise for me?
o How best can I memorize this information?
o How is this information relating to what I already know?
o How would I explain the information up to this point?

5. Add your own Monitoring questions:
• Evaluation/Self Assessment:
o Have I reached my goal?
o What worked?
o What didn’t work?
o Would I do things differently next time?
o How can I paraphrase and summarize this information?
o How can I represent this information in pictures, diagrams, etc.?
o How would I best explain this information to someone else?
Add your own Evaluation questions:
• Questions related to Constructing Knowledge and Meaning
o How is this related to what I already know?
 Does it go against something I know or believe? How can I reconcile that
conflict?
 Does it support something else I know or believe? How?
 How does this change anything I currently think or know?
o How could I use this in different contexts/scenarios?
o Does this highlight or help me see something or topics that I realize I do not know
enough about? What can I do to learn about those topics?
Add your own questions related to Constructing Knowledge and Meaning: