Metacognition

Metacognition is at the heart of all we do. We believe that our children have the potential to connect to how they learn, to stretch their capacity to learn and to transfer their learning to new contexts, both in school and beyond. This is a process that we apply to all of our curriculum. The children explore how they learn as questioners, through using their senses to notice their environment, gain knowledge and investigate detail and by capitalising on the resources available to them through selecting the best resource available to them. We have developed a progressive framework for learning behaviour which enables our children to consciously improve how they learn.

In September 2020 we engaged with the CDEC ‘Afloat’ project as part of our Covid-19 recovery curriculum. We selected four key learning behaviours for the children to explore– empathy, listening, perseverance and collaboration. The children empathised with each other through sharing their experiences of lockdown and trying to understand how things were slightly different for all of us. They have showed great perseverance since returning to school – this has been deepened through asking them to talk about the strategies they use and applying those to challenges within the classroom.

We have found that having a shared language for learning, making learning visible and building on these foundations has enabled our children to feel more confident to 'have a go', to recognise when they are unsure but not feel anxious about it and to invest in new opportunities.