Metacognition and Reading

Tenured teachers in New York City can choose one of two options when it comes to evaluating their skills and performance each year. Option A is a straight forward formal observation of a lesson including a pre and post interview. Option B is to conduct a year long action research study of their choosing that highlights one aspect of teaching and connects with current research in the field. Although Option A is the easier of the two, Lauren and I always opt for the second choice.

This year we chose to address the role of metacognition (thinking about thinking) in the reading process. Below is a snippet from our initial proposal...

Researchers consistently posit that metacognition plays an important role in reading. Metacognition has been defined as “having knowledge (cognition) and having understanding, control over and appropriate use of that knowledge” (Tei & Stewart, 1985). A study by Michael Pressley detailed the active comprehension strategies employed by good readers as they make sense of written text (Metacognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension, 2002). Successful readers are described as active learners who engage in metacognitive activities such as planning before reading, monitoring understanding during reading and checking outcomes after reading. This interaction with the text determines one’s level of comprehension. It is concluded that metacognitively sophisticated reading teachers can teach children to become metacognitively skilled, self regulated readers through modeling strategies and scaffolding student practice of comprehension strategies during reading.

We were very interested in getting to know our students views not only on the reading process but also in gaining insight into how they felt about themselves as readers. Did they consider themselves to be part of the 'literacy club' or outsiders? It sounds like heady stuff for five-and six-year-olds but I find children to be surprisingly articulate when it comes to speaking about themselves. It starts young folks.

To begin we used a modified version of The Burke Reading Interview. We included questions about favorite books or types of books in addition to rewording some of the existing questions. All of the interviews were videotaped in our school library with Lauren and I taking turns in front of and behind the camera. We used these initial interviews as a baseline with a two-fold purpose; to monitor growth or change in perception over the school year and to view alongside videotaped running records to see if the strategies the children said they used while reading matched the strategies they actually employed as they read.

The second stage of our research was to videotape individual children as they read and conduct a Running Record of the reading. Running records track everything a child does as they read. The teacher notes if the child omits a word, goes back to the beginning of the sentence, self corrects, inserts another word, says a word other than what is written, etc. This is followed by an in-depth analysis that can be broken into three categories; semantic, syntactic and grapho-phonic. From this, one can determine which strategies a child is using while they read. Are they are reading for meaning, focusing on how the word looks (and which part of the word), using the structure of the sentence or a combination of the three? Many educators use running records without following through on the analysis. This makes me nuts. Many also engage in selective notation, usually not marking when the child goes back to self correct, which also makes me crazy.

Running records present a challenge when assessing Deaf readers because of the differences between manual and oral/written forms of communication. American Sign Language does not have a written component and cannot be measured according to one to one correspondence between text and spoken word. This is an area that I am interested in addressing for my doctoral research. However, in various pilot studies I have seen advantages that signing the text affords assessment that are not available while speaking a text out loud. This fascinates me.

The reason for addressing metacognition in the first place is so that students are aware of what they do as they read and to help promote the engagement of other strategies when they get stuck. The theory behind our research is that once a child knows this explicitly they are better equipped to meet the challenges of more difficult texts.

As the school year draws to a close Lauren and I are busy gathering our findings and creating a presentation to share with our colleagues. We are finishing up the final round of videos, asking the children the same questions we asked at the beginning of the year to see if perspectives have changed. Our students have grown and changed so much this year and that is clearly documented on the videotapes.

It has been a fantastic, exhausting school year. I am very sad to see another year, my 11th, fade away. I don't know how parents do it. I just want to hold on to the kids and protect them from everything, including second grade and any teacher they have who may not treasure them as I have. I go through this every year. Crazy.