Metacognition in the EYFS

The Education Endowment Foundation found that “evidence suggests the use of ‘metacognitive strategies’ – which get pupils to think about their own learning - can be worth the equivalent of an additional +7 months’ progress when used well. However, while the potential impact of these approaches is very high, particularly for disadvantaged pupils, less is known about how to apply them effectively in the classroom.” I think that this may be because many people either have never heard of metacognition or they believe it to be more academic and confusing than it really is. In reality, it is something we do all the time and every day.

Take getting dressed this morning, for example. How did you decide what to wear today? You probably looked at the weather, decided how comfortable or formal you wanted to be, thought about the task and plans the day ahead held for you, evaluated what was in the wardrobe and what was in the wash, possibly made decisions based on the impression or aesthetic you wanted to project. In this one simple task, you used a range of metacognition skills. In thinking now about what your thought process was you have just done a good piece of metacognition analysis and self-reflection.

Metacognition is everywhere and in everyone from birth. It was when I started researching metacognition that I realised just how amazing brains and thought processes are from birth to five. I genuinely think that from birth to five our minds make more rapid development than in any other time in our lives. Even from age 3-5, a child’s brain will make more metacognitive progression than that of a student undertaking a PhD. It is this that led me to create a metacognition approach to teaching, and my complete daily and weekly approach in my preschool class is now based on metacognition. In particular, an approach called Thinking Moves.

I first discovered Thinking Moves when the book Thinking Moves A-Z by Roger Sutcliffe, Jason Buckley and Tom Bigglestone, was released in 2019. I found it whilst browsing for ideas on how best to do Philosophy for Children with my preschool class, as this was a whole school initiative in the school I worked in. Thinking Moves broke metacognition into 26 skills (or moves), one for each letter of the alphabet. I have to admit that before this point, I had never really looked into metacognition approaches before, believing them to be beyond my skill set. After all, it sounded a bit brainy and scientific. After reading Thinking Moves, I began to plan some lessons in this way, and it wasn’t long before Thinking Moves had crept out of my Philosophy for Children sessions and into our everyday lives in nursery.

As I said, Thinking Moves gives a different metacognition skill for each letter of the alphabet. Many of these skills I will often see working together in the same activity. Take an example of a tiny part of the routine seen in most early-years classrooms as an example; that of tidy up time. In just one five minute session of tidying up, you will see children displaying so many of the Thinking Moves skills. They CONNECT and DIVIDE as they decide which basket to put specific toys in (the toy hippos go in the basket with the giraffes because they share a connection of being zoo animals but they must never go in the car basket – even a three-year-old knows that!). Children LISTEN/LOOK when adults give instructions and when deciding which area to tidy next; they FORMULATE as they plan how to tidy an area (or how to hide somewhere, so they don ‘t have to tidy, then JUSTIFY it when you find them that they were ‘just going to the toilet’); they ORDER and SIZE items as they tidy the sand shelves; and ZOOM IN/OUT as they look for which areas are tidy or still need some work. With a bit of support (and loving nagging from an early-years practitioner) these 3- and 4-year-olds have displayed eight metacognitive skills in just a five-minute tidy up time. 

That is why I quickly realised that I could use this Thinking Moves approach for my whole planning and ethos in class. It was just as useful in everyday tasks as it was in exploring big concepts such as honesty, fairness and similarities and differences. I also found it fit within every area of the EYFS curriculum, and it wasn’t long before I started to write lesson plans and resources for other practitioners to use. That eventually led me on to writing a book, co-published with DialogueWorks, the organisation which published Roger Sutcliffe’s Thinking Moves and have now trained practitioners around the world in the approach. My book took a new look at Thinking Moves as I explored how these metacognition skills could be seen and supported from birth.

For anyone wanting to explore a metacognition approach to early-years practice then Roger’s Thinking Moves A-Z and my book, Beautiful Thinking, are a great place to start but you also have the tools already available to you right now. Just take a peek inside the early-years framework, Development Matters, and you will find that the whole of the Characteristics of Learning are metacognition skills. 
So for those of you who already focus heavily on characteristics of learning, schema play, a curiosity approach or loose parts and open-ended play, guess what – you are already most of the way there to having a metacognition approach to teaching. All you need to do now is learn a bit more about metacognition and let that reframe the way you think about learning.

 

Dulcinea has given us three print copies of Beautiful Thinking to give away to our readers. Simply send your email address to marketing@mortonmichel.com with 'Beautiful Thinking' in the subject line by Friday, 30th April. We will draw three winners and notify them on that date.

 

Dulcinea Norton-Morris is an author and Early Years Teacher from Lancashire. She is also an associate of DialogueWorks and an accredited Thinking Moves trainer. Dulcinea’s book, Beautiful Thinking; Metacognition and philosophical teaching from birth to five, can be found on Amazon. Her metacognition resources and Roger Sutcliffe’s Thinking Moves can be found at DialogueWorks. Dulcinea can be found on Facebook (@MagicalEYFS) and Twitter (@Dulcinea EYFS).


The views expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect the views of Morton Michel.

 

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