Tapping into Students Learning Awareness LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

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Tapping into Students Learning Awareness
LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

• A.K.A
• Metacognition

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Metacognition

• Peoples knowledge of their own learning and
  cognitive processes
• Regulation of learning processes to enhance
  learning and memory
• Basically the more met cognitively
  sophisticated-the greater potential for learning

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Metacognitive Knowledge and Skills

• Aware of ones own learning and memory
  capabilities are, and of what learning tasks can
  be accomplished
• You cant do it all at once, learn to segment
  larger assignments
• Knowing which learning strategies are effective
  and which are not
• How do you learn, whats the best way to commit
  information to long-term memory
• Plan an approach to learning that is likely to be
  successful
• Limit distractions, find your natural learning
  time of day
• Use effective learning strategies
• Note taking, recording lectures, memorization,
  hands-on lab work
• Monitor your present learning state
• Take time to review and double-check what you
  have learned
• Find and address areas of weakness
• Know how to retrieve previously stored
  information
• Tie-in past knowledge to newly gained information
  
• Its all about association

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Metacognition.

• Still confused?
• Its all about
• thinking about
• thinking

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So just how should the students think about
thinking?

• say in reading?
• Clarify the purpose for reading something
• Ask yourself, why do I hope to learn from this
  text passage?
• then stop talking to yourself
• Determine what is most important and focus on
  that
• You only have so much time, get the facts, the
  big facts
• Bring your prior knowledge into play, and
  associate possible examples of the ideas
  presented
• If youre reading about Roman history, imagine
  how you would have made the decisions to invade
  and conquer the world, what would you have done
  differently?
• Ask for clarification on ambiguous or unknown
  words or points of interest
• If you dont know it, dont skip it write it
  down and look it up
• Critically evaluate what you read, then
  stopcheck for consistency, review, and move on

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• Metacognitive thinking requires
• -FOCUS-
• If you get distracted, STOP, reorganize or take a
  break
• Dont try fooling yourself, you cant trick the
  mind past exhaustion
• Better to learn it right once slowly then quickly
  learn it wrong over and over again

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Self-Regulated Learning

• The process of setting standards and goals for
  personal success
• Setting personal goals
• Controlling motivation
• Handling emotion

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The process of self-regulated learning

• Goal setting identify, from the start, a desired
  end result for the learning activity.
• Know what you want to accomplish
• Planning determine how best to use the available
  time
• Plan ahead!
• Self-motivation maintaining intrinsic motivation
  to complete the task
• It takes a variety of strategies to stay on task,
  use several learning tools, dont just stick to
  one
• Attention Control give the task at hand your
  full attention
• Focus, clear your mind of distracting thoughts
• Tune out the static

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The process of self-regulated learning continued

• Application of learning strategies select the
  appropriate approach to the type of learning to
  be committed
• Passively reading about model trains doesnt need
  the same level as reading up on heart surgery
  -especially if youre a doctor.
• Self-monitoring Creating check points to see
  whether any progress is being made
• Modification midway through the goal is OK, if
  youre on the wrong track, change it
• Self-evaluation assess the final outcome of
  ones efforts
• Is what I have learned sufficient for the goals
  I have set?
• Do I need more, or have can I streamline with
  less?
• Self-Reflection Was all this work successful,
  have you satisfied the goal, were there any areas
  of concern, how efficient was the process?

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Effective Learning and Study Strategies

• So whats a Strategy?
• A strategy is the intentional use of one or more
  cognitive processes to accomplish a particular
  learning task
• In other words knowing that in order to be
  effective youre going to have to apply some of
  learning tools
• You cant just wing it

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• In order for learning to be meaningful youre
  going to have to get
• -TACTICAL!-

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• Learning strategies are more general/overall
  strategies of accomplishing a goal.
• Example building a skyscraper requires planning
  to hire a architect to design a model (youre
  going to need to know what to build)
• Tactical learning involves specific tangible acts
  
• -actually putting on a hardhat and stamping
  rivets

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Tactical Techniques

• Meaningful Learning
• Relating new material to knowledge already stored
  in long-term memory
• Elaboration
• The process of using prior knowledge to interpret
  and expand on new material
• Both techniques work hand-in-hand with each other

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Organization is Key

• Organization is more than simply listing
  unrelated facts
• Organization needs
• -Structure-

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Organization techniques

• Start simple
• outlines are a great way to chronologically
  order a series of events.
• great for lectures and textbook readings
• However-if you can function without an outline,
  dont bother
• some people do perfectly well without them

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Organization continued.

• Graphic representations
• Maps
• Flow Charts
• Pie Charts
• Matrix
• Visual learninggreat tactic

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Organization continued.

• Note Taking encoding of material
• combines visual and verbal learning skills
• Its-zafact Students who take notes -but didnt
  review- still remember more!
• Effective Note taking depends on
• consistency with overall goal
• summarize main ideas
• clear understanding to student
• include details that support the ideas
• Great notes include student elaborations of
  material your thoughts

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Identify Important Information

• Students encounter more information than can be
  stored in long-term memory
• Too much information about nothing, too much
  educational rap, -Bob Dylan.
• Filter the necessary from the unnecessary, the
  important details from the trivial
• Underline________________ useful information
• Highlight the facts, but dont overdo it.
• -its a highlighter not a paint roller

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Summarizing

• Summarize condense and integrate
• Identify super and subordinate ideas
• Delete trivial and redundant information
• Find supporting information for each main idea
• Identify a topic sentence for each paragraph or
  section
• Summarizing ultimately helps to student learn and
  remember classroom material more effectively

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Comprehension Monitoring

• Effective learners periodically check to be sure
  they are understanding and remembering what they
  hear in class and read in a textbook and reread
  or ask questions when they encounter difficulty
• In other words check to be sure you have a
  strong footing before you jump onto new
  information.
• Ask questions, critically review the material
  before you move onto more challenging
  concepts/ideas
• DANGER If you think you have know something but
  actually misunderstand the message you have an
• -Illusion of knowing-

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Illusion of Knowing

• When students think they know class material,
  they are less likely to study it
• Students who have the illusion of knowing will
  stop studying prematurely
• To combat I-of-K
• -Draw pictures or diagrams of material studied
• -Formulate questions before a lesson or reading
  assignment
• -Self-questioning who, what, when
• -Test your confidence in the material
• short quiz, flash cards, matching, and ol
  memorization

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So why dont students always use effective
strategies

• Uninformed/misinformed about effective strategies
• Epistemological (what we think knowledge is)
  beliefs that tend to underestimate or
  misrepresent a learning task
• Mistakenly believe they already are effective
  strategists
• Little relevant prior knowledge to draw upon
• Assigned learning tasks that do not lead to
  sophisticated strategies
• Goals are inconsistent with effective learning
• Assume sophisticated learning strategies require
  too much effort to make them worthwhile
• Low self-efficiency about their ability to learn
  in an academic setting

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Promoting Effective Learning and Study Strategies

• Students learn strategies more effectively when
  those strategies are taught within the context of
  the specific subject domains and actual academic
  learning tasks
• The teacher should suggest/instruct/provide
  questions to the class in various ways or
  effective learning
• Students can use sophisticated learning
  strategies only when they have a knowledge base
  to which they can relate new material
• Engage the students in drawing inferences and
  clarifying ambiguities
• Students should learn a wide variety of
  strategies, as well as the situations in which
  each one is appropriate
• different strokes for different folks, what
  works well for one person/situation may not be an
  across-the-board solution
• Effective strategies should be practiced with a
  variety of tasks on an ongoing basis
• Learn to apply to strategy to many different
  tasks over a period of time

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Promoting Effective Learning and Study Strategies

• Strategy instruction should include covert as
  well as overt strategies
• The immediate mastery of studying book-work
  should carry on into more advanced lifelong
  learning
• Teachers can model effective strategies by
  thinking aloud about new material
• Use clever and interesting correlations to help
  the students associate learning to memorable
  references
• Teachers should scaffold students initial
  attempts at using new strategies, gradually
  phasing out the scaffolding as students become
  more proficient
• A.K.A.-when the time comes take off the training
  wheels
• Students can often learn effective strategies by
  working cooperatively with their classmates
• Two brains are better than one
• Students must understand why the study skills
  they are being taught are helpful
• You need to see the value why go to the extra
  effort to learn something new if it has no
  applicable value

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Promoting Effective Learning and Study Strategies

• Students should have epistemological beliefs that
  are consistent with effective strategies
• Students needs a little push, or rather feel the
  need to apply the study skills (epistemic
  doubt)a good thing
• Students should develop mechanisms for monitoring
  and evaluating their own learning
• Set specific goals
• Keep ongoing records of performance
• Provide criteria to judge performance
• Delay feedback to first allow student
  introspection
• Encourage and reinforce
• Students must believe that, with sufficient
  effort and appropriate strategies, they can learn
  and understand challenging material
• I think I canI think I canI think I can

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Works Cited

• Ormrod, J. (2004). Chapter 7 Social Cognitive
  Theory. Human Learning 4th ed. New Jersey.
  Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.