How do I use my knowledge of a range of strategies, and how do
I use my knowledge of the task to purposefully direct my
thinking and to monitor my thinking to support success with
that task? It's really concrete.
You know, you could, you could, these are terms that we can use
as teachers and in classrooms to support pupils in developing
certain approaches. You know, I think probably, you
know, obviously you guys have been in the game for a while.
We would have called this independence back in the day,
but unhelpfully so because, well, what does that really?
Mean, you know, meta cognitive strategies help writing become
more transparent, more accessible, and help, you know,
help people just get a sense of, of control over over that
process. Reluctance in writing is a very
special kind of basis and that you think it's made particularly
frustrating both for probably the learner and the the teacher.
Welcome to Think EDD of our Primary Education, the podcast
that makes time space think about pedagogy, teaching and
learning, professional development.
Anything of interest or time for an enthusiasm rich primary
teachers. This week I am joined by Jen
Sutherland and Donny Morrison as we explored metacognition in
writing and what that might mean for our practice in school and
in particular the classroom now. Jen and Donny were very kind in
donating a session for our Tadape online conference.
Tickets can be found by the link in the the description.
We've got sessions from Rachel Ball, Nellie Hahn, I'm callback
Sure Welsh, Matt Hinckley, Kitty Moral, Jason Amber Gottfried,
Donnie Morris and Jeff Sullivan and we've got more on the way
in. So if you're interested in
online and on demand professional development
opportunities, click the link, go to the Eventbrite and you'll
be given access to all of those and anything that we add to the
the page over the next 12 months.
So without further ado, let's get straight into today's
episode. Jane and Dolly, it's lovely to
see you today. Hi, we both.
We are great. Thank you.
For having.
Us Thanks for having us. Now, my pleasure.
So obviously you guys have spoken at a couple of Tatabay
conferences and we've been. So it's not talking about, we're
going to have this conversation for a while.
And so, yeah, so it's really good to finally find the time to
do so. Absolutely.
Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks Kieran.
I mean, as it's your first time, I thought probably makes sense
for us to start with a little bit about who you are and how
you got here today. Yeah, hi, it's my name's Jen
Sutherland and I am a primary teacher.
I am Co director of Luminary literacy with Donnie and I am
also teaching learning and literacy consultant.
So I've been in primary education for about coming up to
18 years now. I've spent the bulk of that in
schools as a primary teacher in Yashid and simulator.
I then spent some time in teacher education and then in
school development, but I then moved into teaching and learning
consultancy and literacy consultancy.
So I sort of divide my time now between working on luminary
literacy and supporting schools sort of across the country with
teaching and learning expertise, developing teaching and learning
and literacy expertise. But also I spent every Thursday
and Friday with a brilliant bunch of year five children down
in South London who very much keep me on my toes.
So yeah, that's a little bit about myself, my backgrounds,
Kieran. And for me, similar to Jen, I've
been, yeah, must have been, yes, similar. 18 come up to 18 years
in education. Big chunk of that has been as a
primary school teacher. I've been lucky enough to teach
in all key stages, including early years.
I've worked as an English subject lead, senior leader, key
stage leader. And for the last good chunk,
I've been working as a literacy consultant, doing lots of
travelling and working with teachers and the particular, you
know, passion for literacy curriculum design and pedagogy.
Yeah. So yeah, excited to be here.
You guys, you're working together for a company and you
decided you're actually going to go be brave and go out on your
own and try and help schools. That's it.
Oh, I should have added as well. I'm also Co director of luminary
literacy too. Yeah, yes, that's for a new.
Company we're really excited about it, but all about sort of
expert literacy support for primary schools with a
particular focus on writing. So our sort of evidence forms of
secrets writer quick limit is a big arm or kind of what we do.
Yeah. And so I mean like reading and
writing are always of great interest to the sadapi audience.
You know, everyone always really keen to to learn more because
it's one of those ones where, you know, you need a lot of
specialist knowledge to support pupils with one of the most
difficult things that they'll possibly encounter.
And we're going to focus on writing as opposed to the whole
of literacy because I know that that's very broad.
Legacy rightly said, Yeah, when we were talking, you know, one,
one episode is is not isn't it? There's not a conversation about
literacy, Mack. So we will we'll maybe cover
that over the next couple of years or so.
I. Yeah, Part 2.
At some point, perhaps, yeah. I love the Part 2 yeah because
yeah, if I always come back to things over over extended period
of time and see how things and then comes with this big sort of
final ethnographic graphic record.
But we're going to look at metacognition in writing and
always makes sense to start with definitions.
What do we mean when we say meta cognition in?
Yeah, I suppose it would probably make even more sense to
just zoom out even further for a moment and just talk about
metacognition and cognition more generally, and then zoom back in
and talk about metacognition in writing.
And I think whenever we talk about metacognition and
cognition in training, we tend to draw a lot on the EEF meta
Cognition and Self Regulated Learning guidance report that
tends to be really useful in terms of making what could be to
potentially quite complex concepts that a little bit more
accessible for teachers and leaders.
And so if we think about cognition using the definition
from that report, cognition is all about the knowledge of the
content and the concepts required to be successful with a
specific task. So in literacy, this might be
knowledge of how an adjective functions and basic knowledge of
how to use an adjective to modify a noun.
Or it might be knowledge of the function of an adverbial.
And it might be the knowledge of how to use an adverbial to
extend or to expand a clause to add some detail.
So that will be the cognition side of things.
Then we've got the meta cognition, which goes beyond
what do I know and need to be able to do?
And it goes into how do I use my knowledge of myself as a
learner? How do I use my knowledge of a
range of strategies, and how do I use my knowledge of a task to
purposefully direct my thinking and to monitor my thinking to
support success with that task. And those meta cognitive
strategies tend to fall broadly into 3 categories of planning,
monitoring, and evaluating. So how do I plan and monitor and
evaluate my thinking to support myself to be successful with a
task? But then if we sort of really
zoom in and we bring that into the context of writing
specifically, some metacognitive strategies and writing might be,
and there are many writing is full of metacognitive
strategies, but I'll try to outline, I'll go for five key
strategies here. So one metacognitive strategy in
writing might be just generating ideas for writing in the 1st
place. So coming up with things to
write about. And we know that real life
writers, when they they get going with writing, they will
draw on a whole range of sources.
And they're coming up with ideas for writing.
So they will draw on their life experience.
They might think about events that they've lived through.
They might think about places that they've been to or
conversations that they've had. But they also might draw upon
books that they've read or films or TV that they've seen, or even
games that they've played. And they might draw upon that
whole range of sorts of sources to help them to generate those
ideas for writing. And that would be a
metacognitive strategy because it is somebody planning their
thinking to support them to be successful with a task.
And I think that links quite nicely into just planning more
generally as a meta cognitive strategy because there are so
many ways to plan for writing. You might plan through talk, you
might plan through drawing pictures.
You might plan through play. You might plan through sort of,
I see. You might plan through
discussion. You might plan through drama.
You might plan through words and phrases.
And then if you're planning through words and phrases, you
might also go into bullet points and organizational devices and
things like that as well. There are so many different
strategies and ways that you could use to plan a piece of
writing. And again, that is all a meta
cognitive strategy. Another key meta cognitive
strategy in writing would actually just be turning your
thoughts into words and sentences and into paragraphs,
that sort of function for the reader.
So we might have a thought in our head of what it is that we
want to write about, but are we able to turn that into a
functioning sentence or actually into a sequence of cohesive and
coherent sentences to form a paragraph?
And oral composition can often be a really important part of
that. Or we might also have that kind
of rehearsal that we have on a whiteboard as well when we
sometimes rehearse a sentence or a paragraph before we commit it
to paper. And again, that's all part of
planning and monitoring that thinking process.
I think a really huge 1 when it comes to metacognitive
strategies for writing would be knowing how to use a range of
resources to support your writing.
So by that range of resources, that might be the teachers live
modelling, it might be resources on the working rules such as
scaffolds and vocabulary banks. It might be drawing upon a
mental text, it might be drawing on previous learning in your
book. So turning back to a previous
lesson, drawing on that too. And I think linked to that is
having that range of strategies to kind of help yourself find a
way through when you get stuck in a piece of writing as well,
and knowing how you can use those resources to help yourself
to get unstuck. And then I think a final sort of
key metacognitive strategy here to touch upon would also be
editing. Editing's always sort of a huge
beast in itself. And, and there is so much to
metacognition when it comes to editing.
But we know that that specific feedback to improve writing is
such an important part of developing writers.
And we know that effective feedback doesn't just improve
the writing as a task, it actually develops the writer in
terms of them understanding and evaluating which strategies
supported them to be successful in their writing and which
strategies they need to develop moving forward as well.
So that sort of real rigor and meaningful approach when it
comes to editing. So that sort of an overview is
definitely not a comprehensive list, but as an overview of some
key metacognitive strategies when it comes to writing.
And I think the reason that we're so interested in these
metacognitive strategies is that through our observations and
experiences of working with schools where there's no
specific focus on writing, we have found that the strategies
can quite easily be overlooked actually in terms of like the
attention paid to them when it comes to explicit teaching and
developing new strategies for pupils.
And this is something we've noticed through being in schools
ourselves and having countless conversations with teachers when
we're having those conversations.
And teachers are saying to me things like children just, you
know, they just don't know how to draw upon the model or where
they might be commenting and saying things like people's just
get that real fear when they open their book and they've got
to get writing. And even though they've got a
plan that they have completed, they still don't quite know how
to turn that plan into a piece of writing on the page in front
of them. So we're almost on a bit of a
mission to really delve into these master cognitive
strategies and writing and to think about how important they
are for developing children as writers in primary school.
So that's a a bit of an overview, high level overview of
of what we're meaning when we talk about metal cognitive
strategies specifically in writing a primary.
What I really like is that it's, it's really concrete.
You know, you can, you can, you're, these are terms that we
can use as teachers and, and in classrooms to support pupils in
developing certain approaches. You know, I think probably, you
know, you obviously you guys have been in the game for a
while. We would have called this
independence back in the day, but unhelpfully so because,
well, what does that really mean?
You know, But oh, that people's a bit more independent.
Actually. He's got the pupils able to
utilize the, the tools and strategies you've described,
Jen. So I think what I really like
with that definition is that it allows us to work with it.
Because my worry with metacognition when it first sort
of came out was that it was a bit of a buzzword and it didn't
really mean anything. But actually what you've
described means a lot and actually can be.
I can see how that can be really helpful for for teachers.
Yeah, it's funny. Metacognition can feel like
something that's quite opaque in it, accessible, and it can feel
like a bit of a scary word sometimes if you haven't spent
the time looking into it and doing the research around it.
And I think you're right that actually sometimes, not just
within writing, but I'm sure you'll find the same within
maths and within other subjects. Once we start speaking about
those metacognitive strategies. And as a teacher, you're able to
hear those concrete examples and think about, oh, actually that
is something that I already do in my classroom, or is, or that
isn't something I do at the moment, but something that I can
see that my children definitely need.
So I think there is, yeah, this need to demystify metacognition
a little bit and make it that bit more concrete and accessible
to teachers. Absolutely.
And you can see especially with the with the blank page and
writer's block, I think I can see how it's been really, really
powerful. Why is it worth?
I mean, we started to branch, branch into this.
Why is it worth spending time on this in the classroom?
I might jump in here, Kieran. I think metacognition can
fundamentally change writing for pupils and, you know, writing
should be a means of communication ultimately, and
allowing pupils to express themselves, their, their
thoughts, their opinions, their ideas to to the written word
and, you know, for range of varied, you know, purposes and
audiences. And as educators, we would want
this to feel like a really intentional and purposeful
process. You know, something that pupils
can achieve that's achievable and that can help them achieve
something, whatever that that is, you know, might be aiming to
make their audience laugh, entertain their audience, inform
their audience of something important, you know, whatever
their purpose. We want this process to be
something intentional for pupils.
But we know, you know, that for a lot of pupils in writing might
feel like, you know, a box ticking exercise where they're
cramming in as many features or aspects in the writing to get
another piece of writing done and completed.
So it can become very product orientated and focused rather
than than process orientated. And I think, you know,
metacognitive strategies shine a spotlight on on the the process
of writing and, and, you know, developing the writer rather
than a single piece of writing. You know, writing is or learning
to write, I guess is a journey. And I get, you know, and many
writers would agree that it's a lifelong journey at that.
And in also cognitive strategies can really support and have
significant impact on people's confidence and their motivation
for for a people who might be struggling with writing, that
might the overwhelming feeling might be that writing is
something that's largely mysterious and overwhelming.
And not that they know that they're finding it difficult,
but in the harder layer there, as well as not knowing why
they're finding it difficult, they might be asking themselves
questions like, you know, why is my sentence not making sense?
Why, why are my paragraphs or my section of writing not coherent
or, or, or cohesive? Why is my writing ultimately not
having the impact that I thought it might have on my audience?
And I think, you know, meta cognitive strategies help
writing become more, you know, transparent, more accessible and
help, you know, help people get a sense of, of control over over
that process. And I really love Jennifer
Webb's book, the Meta, the Metacognition Handbook.
And I know I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but I love this
analogy said, it's like learning to drive your own brain, which
is also really helpful in analogy there.
So it's about controlling, helping people get control of
that, that writing process. And we know that there is also a
strong link between confidence and motivation.
We know that past success and, you know, experiences of success
will ultimately develop a pupil's motivation if they feel
they're more likely to be successful the next time around.
So that's that's really important.
And you know, if you repeatedly experience something as
difficult, mysterious, confusing, unpredictable, even
you, you're less likely to invest effort in it, in that
task, in that learning in the future.
And you and a lot of pupils will start to internalize that that
belief that I am not only I'm not a good writer, but I'm not a
writer, you know, And conversely, if you have those
experiences of success through, you know, having a range of
metacognitive strategies, you're more likely to feel more
motivated to write in the future.
And conversely, you know, you're more likely to internalize the
idea that I am a good writer and that I am a writer.
And so, you know, we're getting into, I think self regulation
here, which is also a big part of metacognition about, you
know, self regulated writer is someone that's aware and can
manage their motivation and their thoughts and their
learning and writing. Behaviors reluctance in writing
is a very special kind of beast, isn't it?
You know, whenever people decides to opt out, you know, I
think across most of the curriculum, you know it, it
manifests in a certain way. But in writing, I think it's
been particularly frustrating both for probably the learner
and the, the teacher. And, and so this, this, this
awareness of your capacity and that, that like you say, I know,
and the, the idea that success allows yourself perception to
develop, you know, I think that that's crucial, you know,
because then because students are starting to identify as
writers, then they become writers because they're, they're
writing more, you know, just like we're reading more, just
like we're doing more maths, you know, the more you do it, the
the better you're likely to get. What strategies can be used to
develop pupil metacognitive thinking in writing?
And maybe there there may be different elements to this when
we think of a different people. So almost like if I've got the
pupil who's look at the pH and doesn't want to write, is that
strategy different from the pupil who is writing but perhaps
doesn't have an awareness of that?
They're just churning out seven pages of, you know, repetition.
You know that that them you know, they're writing for the
sake of account thing. Is there a distinction to be
drawn or is it just a hot journey in general?
I. Think it's a bit of both.
And I think you know that knowledge and that understanding
of your pupils as individuals and as writers.
Obviously you can certainly guide what what you want to
prioritize in terms of teaching lesser cognitive strategies.
But at the same time, I would say that our first step as
teachers and as schools is just to explicitly teach those
strategies full stop. And I would say that's really
where we want to begin here because I think at the moment
sometimes it's easy to make assumptions.
About the, the meta cognitive strategies that you want
children to have in your class. And so we might have
conversations where teachers might say, and I've definitely
said myself, you know, children that they don't know how to use
the plan or they don't know how to draw upon the model or they
can't come up with ideas. And I think there's a little bit
of reframing for us to do here within primary writing where
instead of saying we don't know how to, we say, well, they
haven't been taught to, they haven't been taught how to draw
upon the model. They haven't been taught how to
use their plan to craft a piece of writing that.
That is our responsibility in primary education to explicitly
teach those meta cognitive strategies.
And so I would say #1 is actually for us just to
explicitly teach those strategies as part of those that
process, obviously, we will be modelling the strategies and
then providing ample opportunities for practice and
for feedback as well. And then I think linked to that,
some work that we're doing at Luminary and something we've
been working on with a couple of schools as well is actually
thinking really deeply about those metacognitive strategies
and how what progression of that those might look like throughout
a child's time at primary school.
So with one school, we've just been thinking about that
specifically within the strand of planning when we think about
the writing process. So when we mention the writing
process, we tend to use the one that is set out in the writing
framework of planning, drafting, revising, editing and sharing.
So that's that sort of five stage process.
So with one school, we've just been really focusing on what are
the metacognitive strategies that we want children to develop
in the planning stage of the writing process from year 1 all
the way up to year 6. So first of all, just thinking
about sort of year one, key stage one in year 1, we want
children to be able to plan their writing through talk,
through play, through drama, and through pictures.
And that's that for year one. OK.
And then we will be moving to year 2.
And then we think right now we're in Year 2, we might have
children to start to bring some words and phrases into their
planning for writing. And then as we move into year 3
and 4, then we start to think about children start to be able
to plan in note form and actually explicitly teaching how
to plan in note form. And then as we get up into year
five and six, teaching children how to use a range of
organizational devices, so such as bullet points to plan in note
form as well. So there's something there about
being really specific and intentional in terms of sort of
mapping out, breaking down and mapping out the metacognitive
strategies that you want to teach to pupils in each year
group. Because the more that you
specify in sequence those strategies, the easier it makes
for you as a teacher to be able to explicitly teach them.
So I think another example within that that I mentioned
earlier is that using a range of resources to support your
writing. So in key stage one, that might
look like using a common exception word resource.
It might look like using lesser formation sort of resource of
some kind, perhaps a phonics resource.
It might be using the teacher model to a certain extent and
then perhaps some scaffolds from the working wall.
And that really is probably enough for key Stage 1.
Because if you think about our 5-6 and seven-year olds who are
mastering the fundamentals of transcription and composition,
any more than that is likely to be quite cognitively overloading
actually. And then as we move into years
three and four, we might think about other resources we want
children to draw on. So perhaps by year three and
four, we are at a stage where we can teach them how to draw upon
a mental text. Perhaps we can also teach them
to draw upon their learning from earlier on in a sequence.
So a child can sort of flick back in a book to 2 pages and
go, oh, right, brilliant. I'm going to use some of those
relative clauses in my writing today.
And then as we get into year five and six, it may be that
children can draw upon learning not just from that sequence, but
actually from a previous sequence.
So they might be writing a story, a story where they're
building suspense and they think, well, wait a minute, in
September we did some work around building suspense.
So I'm going to turn back brilliant.
I've got some devices for building suspense here.
I'm going to see if I can bring some of those across.
Or it might even be how a child can draw upon wider literature
to support them during the drafting process.
So perhaps they're writing an action story and they're
thinking, do you know what? I read a brilliant action book.
It's Open Book Corner. I'm going to go and grab that
and turn to this chapter, and that's going to support me with
that writing. But again, it's being really
intentional, intentional thinking about during the
drafting process in terms of drawing upon a range of
resources to support my writing. What do we want that to actually
look like in each year group? And once we've specified and
sequenced that, then it makes it easier for us to explicitly
teach that and those strategies and provide those opportunities
for practice and feedback. So I've talked there at quite
like a high level, a whole school kind of picture level.
I think if you're a teacher and you're thinking, but what does
this mean for me in my classroom tomorrow?
Where do I start with this? You might just take one
metacognitive strategy and start thinking about how do I
explicitly teach this and how do I to provide those opportunities
for practice and feedback. So a classic one that always
comes up in conversations with teachers in training, one that
we've experienced ourselves is around the children struggling
to know how to draw on the models, craft their own
independent piece of writing. You tend to get children who
struggle with this falling into two counts here.
You get children who don't use the model at all, and then you
get the children who just copy the model and they might swap in
and out kind of 1 adjective from time to time.
And quite often the key reason for that is that we haven't
actually explicitly taught children how to draw upon a
model to craft a piece of writing.
So that might look like actually getting a model of writing up on
the Interactive Whiteboard for you as a teacher, getting your
flip chart out and actually really demonstrating a process
to children of how I'm going to draw upon certain features of
language and certain structural features from this model to
craft my own piece of writing, bringing in my own ideas and my
own words and bringing in my own sentence structures as well.
And as you're doing that, sharing that thinking process
out loud really explicitly for pupils so that they're more
likely to be able to replicate that thinking process, that meta
cognitive thinking process. So I think that real focus on
explicit teaching practice and feedback is so important.
And that's often what's missing here.
And as I say, you might be thinking about that at a whole
school key stage or at a class level.
But then I think linked back to what you said earlier, there
will also be pupils in your class who will benefit from
different sort of focuses on different strategies when it
comes to developing that those meta cognitive strategies.
Because as you said, you might have the writer who rushes ahead
and gets loads and loads of words down on the page, but
perhaps needs some real support with ensuring that their writing
is coherent and cohesive. That's what your focus might be
for that child, but you might also have a child who is the
opposite and just struggles to get words down and struggles to
get started with her writing in the first place.
So that child, it might be far more about how do I use my plan
to get started with a piece of writing.
So I think that there are generic universal and sort of
meta cognitive strategies that can help all writers.
But within that you're likely to have different priorities based
upon your knowledge of the P equals as writers as well.
So yeah, that would that would be the whole, the the sort of
big pitch that I would give them in terms of where you might
start with that. I think you've done well to give
the, the teacher wants to try this out tomorrow or improve
this in their own practice, some guidance.
But like what's immediately apparent is how complicated this
is and how old school in nature this is.
You know, this is a literacy lead thinking about what does
this look like across the school because you know, there's only
so much one person can do. And if, you know, there are ways
to develop this right from nursery through to sex and
obviously beyond, that's a that's a whole, a unified
journey or a coherent journey that needs to be told or needs
to be developed across the school.
You know, So, you know, I think that there there's a limit.
So what we can do in the classroom, obviously we can
develop business students, but you're going to, you know, if I
see if everyone's working on this together, they're probably
getting a whole lot more from the school.
Is that your experience? So whenever you're in schools
working on this kind of thing. Completely agree.
I would say that's almost the ideal, isn't it?
That, that, that whole school sequential picture of
progression. But we know that this is even
the kind of idea of meta cognition, meta cognitive
strategies in writing is something that is still fairly
new to us. I would say kind of in primary
English and with a lot of schools as well.
And, and so you've got a lot of schools who are at the much
earlier stages with this. And it might just be that bit of
thinking at an individual class level.
I don't know if you've got and I think to add to that.
Yeah. And I think it's about just
reflecting as well what that looks like from year group to
year group and how you can explicitly teach and model those
strategies. And, you know, and we do a lot
of thinking around that in terms of what does medical mission
writing look like in year 1. And then of course, you want
those strategies to continue. You don't want them to stop when
you're going to move up to year 2, like then when we take that.
And then how do we develop that again in year 2 in the planning
stage, in the drafting stage, you know, in the editing stage
as well. So I think that's really
important to have a really clear intentional idea of of that
process and how it evolves from year one to year 6.
Yeah. So there's almost the ideal
with, with what you would want, but then there's also what might
be more realistic, where an individual teacher or an English
need might be at the moment when, as you know, he spoke at
the beginning of this about English being such a large
subject. And you know, we know that
English needs are contending often with many priorities.
And there are so many aspects, so many elements to the subject
of English. And this is 1 specific area of
writing that we're speaking about.
So I think for us, it's about trying to bring this to the
forefront of teachers and leaders mind a little bit more
so that we're shifting the conversation and people are
talking more about it and realizing how important those
strategies are. And then yes, ideally moving
towards that, that little bit more rigour in terms of thinking
about how we might sequence and breakdown those metacognitive
strategies over time. And maybe it's, well, it's about
getting pupils to talk about not just the work that they've
completed in writing, but how they completed it.
You know, those children that are successful at writing, what
strategies are they using? What's working for them so that
they're sharing that and modelling that behaviour and
that writing behaviour as much as having that, having the final
piece published, piece of writing on the wall as well.
There will be people listening, right?
Because I think especially literally it's been thinking,
oh, this, the clarity with what you're both speaking is really
interesting. But then as you've gone on, I
think they're thinking, OK, this is something I want to develop
my school. How do they get in touch with
you guys? I was going to do this at the
end, but actually I think, no, they're probably listed this,
but going, I want to get in touch with them right now.
Where what are they doing? They go to your website or the
e-mail here. What's the plan?
Right. Yeah, well, we've got our
website up luminary www.luminaryliteracy.co.uk.
So that's the first port of call.
And from there you can get in touch.
We've got our our e-mail there as well.
So and on the on if you want to find out more about us, you can
see our sort of principles, our approach to, to, to both
consultancy, literacy consultancy, but also on how
we're developing our own writing curriculum and our own writing
pedagogy. And, and we're on LinkedIn as
well, so you and give us a bit of a shout out there.
We are the type of people who will just talk about primary
writing all day long. So, so we're very happy for
anybody to get in touch and even just yeah, to have a
conversation kind of about this moving forward because we're
still very much on this journey ourselves of delving into
medical mission in primary writing, what effective practice
within this looks like. So yeah, very interested to hear
from having further conversations.
Are there any pitfalls that we should be keen to avoid when
we're establishing our approach to the almost the teaching and
utilization of better cognitive strategies within writing?
Yet I think probably a classic pitfall would be trying to do
too much and do it too soon. You know, if I put put it in in
a nutshell, and I think a big bit of our advice, you know,
from from a conversation today would be, you know, start small
and give it time. You know, we're thinking long
term for this. So, you know, when, you know,
Jen spoke about the, the, the process of writing was aspects
of writing from planning, drafting, revising and editing.
So maybe it's starting with, and this could be a, you know, a
whole school approach starting with one of those aspects,
right. So we're going to focus in as a
school on the metacognitive strategies around writing and
we're going to approach this strategically.
I could imagine a really great staff meeting where teachers are
encouraged to ask themselves questions like what do these
metacognitive strategies that support planning of writing look
like in my year group for my children and in my class?
What does it look like to model these strategies and to
explicitly teach these strategies?
So I think focusing on one aspect and, and trying to
implement that first and having a shared language or shared
understanding across the school is, is probably a really, really
good place to start. Another pitfall that just comes
to mind is, and I think this is a pitfall that can come with
talking about metacognition in any subject.
It's it's you're sort of seeing it in as something separate, you
know, seeing it as something as an add on to to the curriculum,
you know, something that's separate to the curriculum.
And I think it's important to remember that that that
metacognitive strategies are something that has to be
developed in context. And they should not stand
separately from a subject, but permeate that subject just part
of the practice of that of that subject in Yeah, rather than
being an add on. And I think there might be a
temptation to have, say, a metacognitive metacognition time
where children might think generically about their meta to
cognition skills they use in learning generally.
Perhaps this might involve them doing, you know, a generic
worksheet or task. And, and, and I think that might
actually be a pitfall because I think metacognitive strategies
are, you know, intimately intertwined with the, the
specific subject that related to, you know, when, and of
course you know, there, there will be overlaps and, and things
that, that are similar in different subjects.
But metacognitive strategies that are, that work in writing
won't be exactly the same as, as the strategies that work in, in
science or PE or maths, you know.
So I, so I think that's really important to keep in mind that
they've got to permeate the subject and be intertwined with
the planning and, and the pedagogy of that subject.
And, you know, in terms of the time frames, I think when we're
working in schools, you know, it's that pressure to get quick
results, you know, and in terms of the, the cycle of time, in
terms in the school year. And, and I think it's important
to remember that this is a long term strategy.
We're really supporting pupils to be lifelong learners,
lifelong writers, you know, as adults, we're still learning
about our ourselves as learners as we take on different
challenges and our own our own metacognitive strategies that
work. And actually pupils, some pupils
in some professions might be still in education well up until
the late 20s and 30s in depending on the profession.
So it's taken that long term view and ensuring that we're,
you know, that we are remembering equipping pupils for
for in lifelong learning and hopefully lifelong writing.
I think that's really powerful, particularly the idea of, you
know, I can see us bolting things on and I can.
And if you do that, you've, you know, you've missed the point of
what you guys have presented there.
Because it's very clear that there's an intimate relationship
between the behaviour of being a writer and thinking about those
behaviours to within as a means to improving and, and
perpetuating, you know, almost like fuelling future writing.
So, you know, so I think, yeah, but I can totally see that.
I can see each of those. I can see how as a profession we
love to do those things and then.
We love a worksheet. But actually, you know, if it's
connected directly to some particular part of your practice
or your or your, your behavior in writing, it's going to be
much, much more powerful, isn't it?
Yeah. And I think if we're thinking of
that, you know, as a whole school approach that might be
involving different subject leads in thinking what what meta
cognition means for that for their to that subject as well.
I mean, when I say like I'm skeptical or like a worried
about medical condition being a buzzword, it's those kind of
things that worry me, you know? Are we putting enough thought
into this? Actually, I'm really pleased
that we've spoken about this at length because it gives me hope
that actually there are a lot of sensible conversations happening
about and meta cognition and meta cognitive thinking in
writing. Because you know what?
We, yeah, we don't want to actually work for the sake of
it. But what you're describing, it's
actually, it's something I wish I was cognizant of myself when I
was teaching writing a lot like Chris, such as work in reading.
I wish that had been on the table whenever I was teaching.
You know, I teach so many kids in a really ineffective way,
basically. I just wonder if you're saying
that like we've had conversations where we've said,
well, you know, this is exactly what we did.
You know that we've, we've had experience of.
So as I said, we're, we're kind of on that learning journey
ourselves. And so like a classic one for
myself was, you know, teaching key stage 1.
I would quite often get children to plan their writing in key
stage one through words and phrases when there was still
very much the early stage of developing their transcriptional
skills. And then sometimes going from
planning to drafting, we'd almost be children writing out
the story and then writing out the exact same story afterwards.
So even things sort of such as, such as realizing that actually,
you know, where children are at those early stage of
transcription, the best way for them to plan their writing isn't
through writing. It is through drama and talking
and through play as well. So as I said, it's it's been a
journey for us, a journey of reflection for us to kind of
look back on what we've done ourselves as practitioners and
our strategies that we've used previously and to think about
how we might shift our practice moving forward as well.
See, you mentioned LinkedIn and I'm a bit grown, a bit
disillusioned with social media in general, but I do like that
I'm going to keep my LinkedIn because I want someone for
people who aren't in touch with me already to get in touch with
me, to DM me, that kind of thing.
But I am going to try and revive.
I don't know if you guys have heard of Discord.
We've got, it's a DAP, a Discord where this is a really group of
really motivated teachers having conversations.
I want to try and revive it a bit.
So this is unprepared. I want to ask you a question.
Listeners are going to hear the question and then you're going
to cut to the end of the episode.
But then if you go to Discord, there'll be a video of this, of
your answer to this question. And so because like, I think
there was a scramble to say that the writing framework is what
we've been doing all along for some groups when that's not
necessarily the case. But actually, I think a lot of
what you've described to me, and I'm just knowing your work in
general, sounds like your work is really complemented because
you're already engaged with the research into effective writing.
But is there anything you've learned from reading the writing
framework that has not actually, this is really going to change
the, the direction of travel for me or my practice in general.
And I'm not expecting to be a massive step because, like I
said, I think you're already on the same page as the writing
framework and but. Is there anything that you know
you've taken away? And I think because I think keen
listeners will be will be really interested to know what your
thinking is on that. And so yeah, any.
Thoughts. Should we leave a dramatic pause
here? What about what it might do is,
you know, you know, you put the feature music in it.
Yeah, in Waves world, that's what's going to happen here.
And then, I mean, it's been absolutely lovely.
I think this is going to be massively useful, really, really
clear, really, really focused. And so I really appreciate that
also to say thank you very much for joining me.
Thanks for having us all. It's been a pleasure.
Thank you. So much Kieran, we hope to see
you again soon. And everyone at home, until next
time, thanks for listening.