Metacognition
An elusive but defining element of learning success.

Without metacognition -- learning awareness -- your child cannot achieve at his or her potential. Delays in developing this most crucial of learning skills explains why many struggling early graders go on to under-achieve at high school and college.

What is it?
Metacognition refers to a level of thinking about what you are learning as you learn (listening to a teacher, reading or studying): Am I getting this? Does this fit with my current knowledge? If I am not getting it, what should I do right now -- re-read, get help?

Planning the way to approach a learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating the progress towards the completion of a task: these require metacognition. Similarly, maintaining motivation to see a task to completion is a metacognitive skill.

Why Is It Important?
Students who demonstrate a wide range of metacognitive skills perform better on exams and complete work more efficiently. They are self-regulated learners who utilize the "right tool for the job" and modify learning strategies and skills based on their awareness of effectiveness.

A student with metacognition is aware of his or her own strengths and weaknesses, the nature of the task at hand, and available "tools" or skills. Individuals with a high level of metacognitive knowledge and skill identify blocks to learning as early as possible and change "tools" or strategies to ensure goal attainment.

Why Many Students Do Not Develop Metacognition
Metacognition when reading/listening to a teacher requires free brain capacity, headroom to think over and above the listening or reading. And so the information needs to be coming to the student automatically, subconsciously like riding a bike.

If child's learning mechanism is overloaded --if reading is not automatic, if listening in class, i.e., auditory processing, is inefficient -- then metacognition cannot develop as it should.

About half of all students in the US leave 8th grade below grade level. The vast majority have delayed metacognitive skills. They may well have functional reading and listening skills but these skills are inefficient, taking up too much conscious brain space, crowding out metacognitive development.

Our Programs Aim to Develop Metacognition
Gemm Learning uses Fast ForWord software to help the brain learn to process efficiently, which frees up brain capacity for development of metacognition.

These skills take years to develop. Time lost learning the basics such as efficient listening or reading with automaticity impacts metacognitive skills later. If you think your child has an over-loaded learning mechanism that could lead to a metacognitive gap later in life, fill in this screening to see if we can help.

For more on metacognition when reading click here.