Landstown Mind Vine

 METACOGNITION .  You saw it in the list of behaviors of intelligent people in the last post and you may have been exposed to it through Virginia Beach City Schools Compass to 2015.  You’re really not sure what it means, though.  Last year I had the rare delight of sitting one-on-one with a gifted third grader who amazed me with his awareness of his own metacognition.  I’m going to give you a peek into the conversation in which this young student revealed his metacognition—thinking about how he thinks…knowing how he knows—to help you better understand what it means.

 He and I were talking about his work habits.  He sometimes seemed to be not paying attention and he wasn’t getting his work done despite being very intelligent and capable.  His teachers and I were working together to try to figure out how to keep him on task and productive.  When I asked him if he could help me understand what was going on, this is what he said, verbatim.

“Your brain and your body are attached.  Your brain is the controller of your body—without it your body would just be an empty shell.  I am ¼ brain, ¼ thinking and 2/4 imagining.  The imagine part is the biggest part of the brain.  The mind is what helps you think.  [When I’m working on an assignment], my body keeps doing what the brain told it to and then my mind gets lost in space (I start thinking about other things I’d rather be doing) and then my brain forgets to tell my body to stop.  And then once I realize that I forgot to stop, I realize that I still have other things to do, and I’ve given myself more work and then I get frustrated.  I want to focus and get it done quickly but the more work means it’s gonna take longer.  When thinking takes over completely, that’s when I do very, very good work.”

I was so impressed with this student’s awareness of his thinking process and his ability to articulate it.  It reminds me that we cannot assume what children are thinking and we often underestimate what they are intellectually capable of.   It’s not something we talk about casually, though, and you may not even know about your own metacognition.  Having gained this insight into his thinking, the student and I were able to come up with some strategies to help keep him on track which is the other part of metacognition: knowing how to get around difficulties in thinking when they arise.

Think about your own thinking and ask your child to talk about his or hers.  Brainstorm ideas for what to do when challenges arise.

To begin the new year, we asked students to determine what it looked like, sounded like and felt like when someone was behaving intelligently.  After they’d had time to brainstorm ideas together, we looked at a list of 14 behaviors of intelligent people adapted from the Habits of Mind work of Art Costa.  Students are currently working on setting goals and improving one of the behaviors from the following list.  Help your child carry this mentality home by commending him or her when they demonstrate an intelligent behavior and problem solving with them when they stumble on an area in need of improvement.

People Behave Intelligently When…

1. They are persistent
2. They stop and think before acting
3. They listen to others, try to understand them and care about their feelings
4. They work together with others to think about ideas and create solutions to problems
5. They can see more than one point of view or way of doing something
6. They think about their thinking–metacognition
7. They try to be precise and accurate in their speech and work
8. They are able to have fun working and learning
9. They seek out problems to solve and ask questions to understand the cause of the problem and find answers
10. They use what they’ve learned in the past to make connections to new learning and to help them understand new information
11. They are willing to risk being wrong because they will learn new things even if they make a mistake
12. They use all of their senses to help them understand new information or a challenge
13. They go beyond the facts and pay attention to little sparks or ideas they have even if they don’t make sense yet
14. They seek out information for the love of learning–they enjoy the excitement of learning something new

 Adapted from the work of Art Costa

Welcome Back to a new school year! One of the great advantages in teaching is that time moves in circles and eventually everything is new again.  While we’re getting a fresh start, this doesn’t mean that we won’t be building on many great successes.  We’ll continue to offer students in the cluster classes challenging curriculum in the form of William and Mary and Virginia Beach City Public Schools gifted units, Math Exemplars, M3, novel studies, Junior Great Books and more.  We’ll also give the students an opportunity to streatch through competitions such as Word Masters, the Math League competition and bridge.  Students will continue to be trained in and apply 21st Century skills of critical and creative thinking, collaboration and problem solving as they work on important and authentic issues such as sustainability.  We’ve got a challenging and busy year ahead!

If you’re new to gifted services and you would like to know more about some of the learning experiences mentioned above, scroll down to peruse older posts here on the blog .  You can also look forward to new posts that will keep you up to date with what’s happening in the cluster classes.  Be sure that I have your current e-mail address if your child is in one of the cluster classes so that I can send you alerts when new content is added.  You’ll also be notified about upcoming parent workshops for parents of gifted students.  You might also have a look at the important dates under the same name in the top left column of the blog.

The first big event this school year will be the screening of every 5th grader–including those who have been formerly identified.  This screening will take place in the morning hours of Tuesday, September 27, right in the students’ classrooms.  There is no preparation for this screening other than a good night’s sleep and a nutritious breakfast, and we’ll send you a reminder about the testing so that you can ensure both of these are achieved.  If you would like to learn more about this process or have questions, you can use this link to read answers to frequently asked questions:                   http://www.vbschools.com/curriculum/gifted/5thGradeScreeningOV.asp .

Though I don’t accept responses here on the blog, I do encourage you to e-mail me with questions, comments or suggestions (kim.cabotaje@vbschools.com). 

Please stand by while we get the school year underway!

Kim Bielmann Cabotaje