Dallas School Highlights Our BrainSMART Strategies in Professional Development

Marcus’ and my professional learning strategies were featured in “The Weekly Armadillo,”  an online newsletter published by the Nathan Adams Elementary School in the Dallas Independent School District.

Quoting from one of our Edutopia blog posts, Inspiring Progress Toward Learning Goals, the excerpt drove home the point that, "By teaching students to monitor their thinking during learning by setting goals, applying strategies, reflecting, and adjusting, teachers will help them improve their learning ability."

The newsletter also drew attention to our strategies for “Goal Setting and The Brain,” which stressed the importance of setting learning coals; choosing the most effect learning strategies, reflecting on what you know and what you need to find out, adjust strategies accordingly, and learning from experience.

Inspiring Progress Toward Learning Goals

Note: This post originally appeared on Edutopia on May 22, 2015.

by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers

The topic of metacognition can seem quite abstract—a complex concept for students to embrace. But it is worth the effort to develop a metacognitive mindset in setting goals for learning and in monitoring progress toward achieving those goals. For teachers empowering students to think about their thinking with the aim of improving learning, it can be truly inspiring when they see the resulting changes in students’ motivation, resilience, and learning gains.

A 2014 study by Veenman and colleagues suggests that metacognition, or “cognition about cognition,” may account for some 40 percent of the variation in learning achievement across a range of outcomes. One of the major benefits of guiding students to become more metacognitive is in the context of goal setting and the impact on their motivation when they take charge of learning goals.