‘What Do I Do Next?’ Helping Students Develop Metacognitive Skills

Exit tickets, learning journals, and self-assessments have become familiar classroom practices, but how often do students have opportunities to use what they’ve learned from those tools in a meaningful way? We ask students to identify what went well, where they struggled, and what they might do differently, but recognizing these things doesn’t necessarily mean students know how to apply that information to future learning.

A student might recognize that a particular approach didn’t work but not understand why, or identify a successful strategy without recognizing when to use it again. Working to help students develop metacognitive skills requires us to move beyond reflection and help learners understand their own thinking, evaluate the strategies they’ve used, and make informed decisions when they encounter new challenges.

From my experience implementing these strategies with students and supporting teachers in using them in their own classrooms, I’ve found that the following four approaches can help develop metacognitive skills as part of everyday instruction, without adding lengthy reflection activities.

1. Help Students Notice What’s Happening in Their Thinking

Before students can make decisions about their learning, they need opportunities to recognize what’s happening as they work. Encourage your students to notice moments of confusion or changes in their understanding while they’re still engaged in a task.

For example, during a reading lesson, ask students to mark a passage where they lost track of the author’s argument. After reading, have them return to that section and consider what caused the confusion. Was the vocabulary unfamiliar? Did the author introduce a new idea? Did they make an assumption that turned out to be incorrect?

Once students identify the source of their confusion, teachers can help them consider which strategy might address it. For example, a student might realize that they understand the individual points an author makes but struggle to see how those ideas connect. Rather than simply rereading the passage, the student might map the relationship between the ideas or examine how the author’s reasoning develops across the text.

The ultimate goal is for students to develop the metacognitive skills to recognize when they’re confused, understand what’s causing the difficulty, and decide how to use that information to move forward.

2. Ask Students to Explain the Decisions They Made While Learning

Occasionally, students will be successful at a task but not understand why. If we ask those students to explain the strategies they used and how those decisions affected their work, it can help them recognize if their approach was worthwhile and when they might want to try something different in the future.

For example, in math, students might compare two ways of solving a problem and explain why they chose one approach over the other, and then say if their choice helped them solve the problem effectively.

Teachers can also help support this process by modeling their own thinking. When working through a difficult problem, a teacher can explain why they’re choosing a particular approach, how they’re determining whether it’s working, and what they might try if they become stuck. Hearing these decisions modeled can help students understand how experienced learners evaluate their progress and adjust their approach when needed.

3. Give students evidence to evaluate their understanding

Students sometimes feel confident about what they’ve learned but struggle to demonstrate that understanding independently. Helping students recognize the difference between knowledge and understanding gives them a more accurate picture of what they know and where they need additional support.

One approach is to ask students to predict how well they’ll do on a brief task before completing it independently. For example, in a writing assignment, students might predict how well a drafted paragraph meets two or three criteria before reviewing it against a rubric or checklist. Comparing their initial judgments with the evidence in their work helps them identify strengths, recognize gaps, and decide what needs further attention.

The initial prediction can take less than a minute, with students rating how well they think they’ll meet a few criteria. After completing the task, they can spend another minute or two comparing their prediction with their actual work and considering what they learned about their understanding.

This type of brief check helps students move from how well they think they understand something to using evidence from their own work to evaluate their learning.

4. Help students turn reflection into a specific next step

Recognizing what went well or where they struggled is only useful if students learn to apply that information the next time they do a task. Teachers can help by asking students to identify one specific change they’ll make the next time they encounter a similar task.

Instead of having students complete a reflection after every assignment, consider asking them to look at an earlier reflection before beginning a similar task. For example, before starting a new writing assignment, students could review feedback and reflections from their previous work, select one piece of feedback and decide how they want to approach the new assignment differently, and explain why. After completing the new assignment, they could compare the two pieces to determine whether that change made a difference.

Teachers might also periodically ask students to review several reflections or exit tickets from different assignments and look for patterns in their own understanding. A student who repeatedly struggles to support an argument with evidence, for example, might recognize that the difficulty isn’t limited to one assignment. Rather than students seeing this as something they’re simply not good at, teachers can help them look more closely at their work to figure out where they’re getting stuck. They might notice that they’re choosing evidence that doesn’t quite support their argument or that they need to work on explaining the connection between their evidence and their claims. This gives students something specific to work on rather than leaving them feeling that they’re just not good at writing.

Reflection gives students an opportunity to consider what happened during learning, but it shouldn’t end with identifying what went well or what was difficult. Students also need opportunities to use those insights to make decisions about how to approach similar challenges. This doesn’t require lengthy activities or separate lessons, as even brief conversations with the whole class, a partner, or a teacher can help students consider what they’ve learned about their thinking and how they might use that understanding in the future.