Metacognitive and Other Learning Strat

Students with ADHD benefit greatly from being taught specific learning and study strategies for school success. Chamot and O'Malley (1994) describe learning strategies as encompassing the following types or categories:

Metacognitive strategies. Planning for learning, monitoring one's own comprehension and production, and evaluating how well one has achieved a learning objective
Metacognitive knowledge. Understanding one's own mental processes and approach to learning, the nature of the learning task, and the strategies that should be effective
Cognitive strategies. Manipulating the material to be learned mentally (as in making images or elaborating) or physically (as in grouping items to be learned or taking notes)

METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Metacognition is “thinking about thinking” and involves consciously overseeing whether you are on the right track or need to make changes in your thinking or approaches.
Metacognitive skills involve the following skills:Previewing and planning for how to go about learning or studying the material
Organizing for the task, getting ready, and setting goals
Monitoring one's own attention, production, and comprehension
Self-assessment and evaluation of how well goals were met and learning took place
Students with ADHD have poor self-regulation and executive functioning, which is what is involved in metacognition. These children typically lack self-awareness of what is working and not working for them and adjusting what they are doing accordingly in order to accomplish their goals.

It is important to teach metacognitive strategies, such as the following:

Planning when, where, and how to study
Monitoring one's comprehension during listening or reading
Monitoring one's production (oral or written) while it is taking place
Self-assessing how well one has accomplished a learning task
Reflecting on what one has learned (Chamot & O'Malley, 1994)

Model and encourage students to ask themselves questions such as the following:

Self-direction

“What is my goal?”
“What do I need to do?”
“What will I need?”
“How will I do this?”
“How much time will I need?”

Self-monitoring and self-correction

“How am I doing?”
“Do I need other information or resources?”
“Do I need more support?”

Self-evaluation

“How did I do?”
“Did I finish on time?” (Hennessy & Soper, 2003)

Teachers use metacognitive strategies for reading comprehension and other learning when they actively involve students in activities requiring them to make connections, set goals for learning, make a plan, monitor their progress, and respond to sentence stems, such as the following:

“I'm thinking…”

“I'm picturing or visualizing…”

“I'm wondering…”

“This reminds me of…”

Here are three examples of metacognitive learning strategies:

Journal responses. There are a variety of ways to use journals to engage students in thinking, questioning, making associations, and so forth during their reading, and responding and reflecting after their reading.
Double entry journals. The paper is divided into two columns. Notes are taken in the left column, citing anything of particular interest to the reader (e.g., quote, description, metaphor) along with the page number. In the right-hand column, the reader comments and records personal thoughts, interpretations, connections, and questions triggered by that section of the text.
Metacognitive journal and learning log. The page is divided into two columns. The left column is labeled “What I Learned.” The right column is labeled “How I Learned This.” This assists students in thinking about and analyzing their own learning process. The right-hand column can state other things, as well. For example, “How This Affects Me” or “Why This Was Difficult or Easy for Me.” The key is reflection and analysis of one's own learning.

Reading logs. Students can write their feelings, associations, connections, and questions in response to the reading. They may be given specific prompts to guide what is recorded in their logs. For example, “What did you learn?” “How did this make you feel?” “How did this relate to any of your own life experiences?” “What did you like or dislike about the author's style of writing?”

Think aloud. This involves externalizing and making overt the thinking processes used when reading.

The teacher reads to students while they follow along in their books.
While reading, the teacher models aloud the process of interacting with the text (for example, making predictions, describing what she visualizes, working through problems to figure out unknown vocabulary, and making connections).
The teacher models how to self-monitor his or her own comprehension by stopping periodically and asking, “Is this making sense to me?
Students can then practice some of these strategies with partners.

COGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES (CSI)

Cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) is an explicit instructional method that is well-researched and effective for students with learning disabilities. CSI uses a highly interactive, sequenced approach consisting of guided instruction and practice leading to internalization of the strategic routine and independent performance of the task over time (Krawec & Montague, 2012).

Cognitive strategies differ from metacognitive strategies but closely overlap. Livingston (1997) explains:

Cognitive strategies are used to help an individual achieve a particular goal (e.g., understanding a text) while metacognitive strategies are used to ensure that the goal has been reached (e.g., quizzing oneself to evaluate one's understanding of that text). Metacognitive and cognitive strategies may overlap in that the same strategy, such as questioning, could be regarded as either a cognitive or a metacognitive strategy depending on what the purpose for using that strategy may be. For example, you may use a self-questioning strategy while reading as a means of obtaining knowledge (cognitive), or as a way of monitoring what you have read (metacognitive).

Cognitive strategies typically come in the form of an acronym for students to better recall the steps of the strategy, which is explicitly taught and practiced. Following are some examples of some common cognitive learning strategies.

SQ3R

This strategy increases comprehension and retention of textbook material (expository or informational) and involves the following steps:

Survey. Briefly look through the reading assignment at the titles, chapter headings, illustrations, charts, and graphs. Skim through the assignment and read the chapter summary or end-of-chapter questions.
Question. Turn the headings and subheadings of the text into questions. For example: Producing Antibodies can become “How do our bodies produce antibodies?” Organic motor fuels can become “What are the different organic motor fuels?”
Reading. Read to find the answers to the developed questions. Identify the main ideas and jot down any questions, notes, or unknown vocabulary.
Recite. At the end of each chapter section, state the gist of what was read. Note: Restating or summarizing into a tape recorder is often very effective.
Review. Check recall of important information from the reading. To that end, a study guide of some kind may be created.

SQ4R

This is the same as SQ3R but includes an additional step beginning with the /r/ sound: write. The SQ4R procedure is survey, question, read, recite, write, and review. After a brief verbal summary of what the reading passage is about, one must write the answers to the questions (in step 2) and then review.

RCRC

This is a study strategy involving these steps (Archer & Gleason, 1989):

Read a little bit of material. Read it more than once.
Cover the material with your hand.
Recite. Tell yourself what you have read.
Check. Lift your hand and check. If you forget something important, begin again.

There are numerous cognitive learning and study strategies. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's website on CSI shares a number of cognitive strategies for reading, writing, math, note taking, test taking, other study skills, lesson plans, and other information for implementation (http://cehs.unl.edu/csi). James Madison University's Learning Toolbox (http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/site_map.html) is another online source of cognitive strategies that are beneficial for students with ADHD.

The Self-Regulated Strategy Development Approach (SRSD) pioneered and researched by Harris and Graham, University of Kansas, has developed numerous learning strategies that are widely used, such as the following.

RAP

Schumaker, Denton, and Deshler (1984) devised a strategy for active reading and aiding comprehension, involving the following steps:

Read the paragraph.
Ask self to identify the main idea and two supporting details.
Paraphrase or put the main ideas and details into one's own words.

POW + TREE

Harris, Graham, Mason, and Friedlander (2008) created these steps for writing persuasive essays. The POW and TREE go together. This and several other SRSD strategies are described on the IRIS Center website of Vanderbilt University (http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/pow/).

POW

Pick an idea or opinion.
Organize and generate notes and ideas for each part of the TREE.
Write and say more.

TREE

Topic sentence. Formulate a topic sentence that expresses an opinion.
Reasons (give at least three) to support the topic sentence.
Explanation. Explain your reason.
Ending. Formulate a statement to summarize the topic sentence.

The following are some additional study and learning strategies:

Note taking. This requires listening and simultaneously writing down major ideas and key information in a useful format so the information can later be accessed. There are a variety of note-taking techniques. One example is the Cornell note-taking method, which involves the following steps:Divide a paper into two columns.
The first column (which is about one-fourth to one-third of the width of the paper) is where key terms, questions, additions, and corrections are written after the class period. It is used for recall of important information.
The right column is about three-fourths or two-thirds of the width of the paper. This is where the lecture notes are written (on the front side of the page only).
Students are to review their notes within twenty-four hours (preferably within three hours) after the lecture. During this time they reread and then fill in key terms, make additions, corrections, and so on in the left column.
In addition, space is left at the bottom of the page for a summary. Good note taking requires learning how to make abbreviations and use symbols.
See more metacognitive and cognitive strategies in other lists throughout this book for reading (Lists 5.3, 5.4, 5.5), for math (List 5.14), and for writing (Lists 5.7, 5.8, 5.9).
See List 3.8 on research-based instructional approaches for more on this topic.

SOURCES AND RESOURCES

Archer, Anita, & Gleason, Mary. (1989). Skills for school success. North Billerica, MA: Curriculum Associates.

Chamot, A., & O'Malley, J. (1994). The CALLA handbook: Implementing cognitive academic language learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Harris, K., Graham, S., Mason, L., & Friedlander, B. (2008). Powerful writing strategies for all students. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Hennessy, Nancy, & Soper, Sandi. (2003). Exercising executive function for efficient learning. Conference session at 54th Annual Conference of the International Dyslexia Association, San Diego, California, November 12–15.

Krawec, Jennifer, & Montague, Jennifer. (2012). Current practice alerts: A focus on cognitive strategy, 19. Division for Learning Disabilities and the Division for Research. Retrieved from http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmi-teaching-ld/alerts/21/uploaded_files/original_Alert19.pdf?1331403099

Livingston, Jennifer A. (1997). Metacognition: An overview. Graduate School of Education, State University of New York at Buffalo. Retrieved from http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/metacog.htm

Schumaker, J. B., Denton, P., & Deshler, D. D. (1984). The paraphrasing strategy. Lawrence, KS: The University of Kansas.

Rief, Sandra. (2005). How to reach & teach children with ADD/ADHD: Practical techniques, strategies, and interventions (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.