Metacognition in the Writing Classroom

The more explicit you are with students about what they stand to gain from putting effort into different aspects of your course, the more students from a wider variety of backgrounds you will be able to reach. As instructors, when we scaffold assignments, value and respond to students’ reflective writing, and are explicit about our learning goals, we make our classrooms truly inclusive. Students in the Writing Program build cumulative portfolios, which span their WR sequence of courses. Portfolio of course have a reflective component, but metacognition should be a key part of instruction even in the absence of a portfolio. Explicitly teaching the hidden curriculum of the writing classroom, and prompting students to reflect on their prior experience with these concepts, is a logical place to begin.

Metalinguistic awareness and an explicit reflective focus in the classroom on language use and the choices inherent in our language are also key aspects of Critical Language Awareness, an approach to teaching that emphasizes the relationships among privilege, identity, and language. These resources may be helpful to instructors looking to include a more explicit metalinguistic focus and some language-centered reflective assignments in their courses. Further reading into linguistic justice may also give instructors ideas for reflective writing related to identity, inclusion, and language.

1. Include metacognitive activities from beginning of the semester to end, rather than just at the end of major assignments.
2. Teach, and scaffold, the process of metacognition effectively.
3. Offer creative ways for learners to reflect on their own learning and writing.
4. Clarify for learners and instructors the goals of metacognitive reflection and the basis (if any) for further assessment by instructors.

Individual resources and Flipped Learning Modules:

• Class Participation Rubric
• Composing a Multimodal Reflection
• Cumulative Portfolios in the Writing Program
• Decoding a Public Genre
• Effective Collaboration with Writing Centers
• Expectations for Academic Writing in the American Classroom
• Inner Critic
• Leveling the Playing Field for Class Participation
• Metacognition
• Planning Peer-to-Peer Work: Groups, Peer Review, & Workshops
• Providing Feedback
• Reflective Writing Activities
• Spotlight Archive 04: Generative AI (July 2023)
• Teaching Writing for Critical Language Awareness
• The Writing Process
• Video Presentation and Reflections
• Visual Representation of Texts
• WR 111 Language Presentations
• WR 111 Mid-Semester Self-Evaluation

In addition, all Essential Lessons contain notes on metacognitive approaches to these lessons.

• Chaterdon, Kate. “Writing Into Awareness: How Metacognitive Awareness Can Be Encouraged Through Contemplative Teaching Practices.” Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language, Learning and Academic Writing, vol. 16, no. 1, 2019, pp. 50-65.
• “Metacognition.” Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning, 2018-2019.
• Taczak, Karen, and Liane Robertson. “Chapter 11: Metacognition and the Reflective Writing Practitioner: An Integrated Knowledge Approach.” Contemporary Perspectives on Cognition and Writing, edited by Patricia Portanova, et al., WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2017, pp. 211-229.
• Winslow, Dianna, and Phil Shaw. “Teaching Metacognition to Reinforce Agency and Transfer in Course-Linked First-Year Courses.” Contemporary Perspectives on Cognition and Writing, edited by Patricia Portanova, et al., WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2017, pp. 191-209.