Some children seem to know what to do when they are stuck. They reread the question, try a different way in, or ask a precise question. That is not luck. It is a set of habits that can be taught, usually called metacognition, or thinking about your own thinking.
The three habits The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) describes metacognition as a cycle of three steps, each of which a child can learn to do out loud before they do it silently:
- Plan. What am I being asked to do? What do I already know that helps? How will I start?
- Monitor. Is this working? Do I understand this part, or am I just reading the words?
- Evaluate. What worked? What would I do differently next time?
The EEF's guidance for schools recommends teaching these skills within the subject a child is already studying, with the adult modelling their own thinking aloud, rather than in a stand-alone "study skills" lesson.
What helps at home and in class - Say your thinking aloud. "I'm not sure what this word means, so I'll read the sentence again." Children copy what they hear. - Ask small, specific questions. "What could you try first?" is more useful than "Concentrate." - Choose strategies known to work. Self-testing and spreading practice over days beat rereading and highlighting in the best-known review of study techniques (Dunlosky and colleagues, 2013). See retrieval practice and the forgetting curve. - Praise the method, not the label. "You went back and checked that step" tells a child what to repeat. "You're clever" does not. - Leave the right amount of difficulty. A task just beyond what a child can do alone, with help available, teaches more than one that is too easy or hopeless. See scaffolding.
A short routine for homework 1. Before starting: "What are you going to do first, and how long will it take?" 2. Halfway: "Is it going how you expected?" 3. At the end: "What was hardest? What would you do differently?"
Three minutes of this, repeated, builds the habit better than a long talk about it.