Metacognition and Self-Regulation

How does adolescent brain development impact metacognition and self-regulation?

Because the frontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for higher order thinking, is no where near fully developed in adolescence, the types of critical thinking we want from students isn't going to just occur on its own. It needs to be taught and carefully cultivated.

How will you help your students develop the three types to metacognitive knowledge (declarative, procedural, and self-regulatory) and the three metacognitive skills (planning, monitoring and evaluating)?

One of the first things I will do in each of my classes is to give the students a learning styles survey as well as a "get to know you" survey which will ask the student what they know about their learning styles, what study habits or routines they use and where they struggle and excel content-wise. We will discuss in class the strategies that tend to work well for each learning type, so the students can get to know their "declarative" knowledge and procedural knowledge. Using their answers, I will develop self assessments catered for each student's learning styles and current metacognitive level. We will discuss as a class before each lesson (in an oral KWLN kind of way) what we will be covering, what they already know,  what their assumptions are about the topic, what they think the lesson is about, what they hope to get out of it. After each lesson, they can add what they learned, as well as how accurate their assumptions were about the topic, or what the lesson would be like.

For larger assignments/projects/essays, I will hand out planning guides (like a co-regulation plan) to help students insert their own due dates for each section of the assignment. This way, they feel like they are in control of their planning and due dates, but are still held accountable for meeting them. The final due date will be chosen by me, though, and they will have to make sure all of the pieces of the assignment (such as proposals, research, bibliography, etc) are all completed before the final due date. As each of their due dates come, I will have them check in with me and let me know how their work is coming along (likely just an email, but face-to-face if they prefer), and they will submit a copy of what they have done so far, and we can discuss if their due date plan seems to be working, and if not, how to adjust. The hope is by the end of the year, the check-ins with me will become unnecessary, and they will be used to setting their own "sub-level" due dates,  monitoring their own progress, and evaluating their efficiency.