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Working with the metacognitive strategies in class

What about reading?

Among the metacognitive strategies, we can focus on a method that, as teachers, you surely know very well… reading comprehension.

  (Google image)

In general, it is not among the students' favorite things, but in the end they will thank you because it is a good way to understand the ideas of a text, but it also serves for many other things that we will explain.

Reading comprehension really helps to work on metacognition. It allows our students to use metacognitive strategies because they control, supervise and evaluate their own reading and their way of reading to understand the text. Furthermore, by having to fully understand the text, they become aware of how necessary it is to control their own learning process. Depending on how seriously they take it, they will understand more or less. Finally, it helps them to have motivation and responsibility, and in the end they will develop more and more interest in reading.

I'm going to give you an example of how to carry out reading comprehension in foreign language class to work on metacognition:

  • First, as a recommendation, prepare well the reading you are going to choose. That is, you can use the one that appears in the textbook, but if you prefer to choose one, you should keep some things in mind. Make sure it fits the level of the students, but in some cases you can choose some reading that is a little higher level, so they will have to work harder and they will pay more attention. Also make sure that you know what the reading is about and that you can answer their questions.
  • Once the text has been chosen, first you have to put them in context, for example by showing them related images or simply reading the title.
  • During reading, we will proceed with the strategies that your students can use: 
  1. Identify the main idea of ​​the text.
  2. Make notes in the margins of the page.
  3. Summarize each paragraph with one word.
  4. Underline the main idea of ​​each paragraph.
  5. Make a summary or a diagram, depending on the text.

  • After finishing reading, they can answer questions about the text or compare it with their daily life. They can also express how they felt when reading it or if they identify with it.

                                                                                                                                             Teacher Paula


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