Updated on
September 24, 2026
Learning to Learn Strategies: Metacognition in the Lesson
Learning to learn strategies for teachers: the key principles, which techniques work best, how learners adopt them and how a school builds the culture.
Learning to learn strategies are habits that let a learner organise their own studying: setting out steps before a task, pausing midway to test whether it is on track, and choosing what to do differently. The teacher models each move first, and retrieval beats rereading.
Learning to learn strategies are the routines a learner uses to plan a task, check how it is going and decide what to change next time. This guide gives you five named moves to teach those routines, a worked example for each phase from Reception to secondary, and a checklist for your next lesson. The moves are the everyday form of metacognition, thinking about your own thinking. They are taught inside ordinary lessons by a teacher who shows the thinking out loud and then hands it over. Learning to learn is the broader competence; metacognition is the engine that drives it.
In a Year 5 literacy lesson the teacher opens a persuasive letter task by saying, "Before I write, I am going to list my three strongest points and pick the order." Learners copy the move: each writes three points, numbers them, then starts. Ten minutes in, the teacher stops the room and asks every learner to tick whether their first paragraph matches point one. Those who cannot tick go back and fix it. That short pause is where the gain sits: explicit teaching of planning and monitoring inside the subject adds about seven months' progress on average, and the effect is largest when the strategy is tied to the content in front of the class (EEF, 2018).
What is learning to learn?
Learning how to learn is the ability to organise your own learning. It covers managing time, managing information and keeping going when a task is hard, alone or in a group. The amount of information a learner meets keeps growing, so knowing how memory works matters more than it did. Organisations such as the EEF now publish guidance on the domains of metacognition that sit behind it.
Key Takeaways
- Learning to learn is metacognition in everyday form: a learner plans the task, checks it midway and decides what to change, inside the content in front of them. Those three acts are the executive control that steers learning (Brown, 1987).
- Retrieval beats rereading: pulling an idea from memory strengthens it far more than reading it again. A two-minute recall at the start of a lesson does more than a highlighted page (Karpicke and Roediger, 2008).
- The teacher models the move before the learner runs it: a class handed a strategy and left to manage it is overloaded, not independent. Show the thinking aloud first, then hand it over in steps (Kirschner, Sweller and Clark, 2006).
- Short, frequent testing breaks the illusion of competence: a five-question quiz tells the learner what they actually know, where a reread only tells them what looks familiar (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006).
Any learner in school can be taught to use what is known about the mind to improve how they approach a task. The same principles hold for a child in Reception and a learner at university; what changes is how much of the routine the teacher carries.
Learning capability is not a fixed trait. It is a set of routines that can be taught and improved over time, including spaced repetition, active recall and chunking.
A learner who has these routines knows how they learn best and can direct their own learning, in school and beyond.
Learning is learnable. The routines on this page can be taught, practised and checked like any other content.
Learners can be taught to chunk information into groups based on meaning, and this improves memory. They can also be taught to switch between focused and diffuse modes of thinking. Intelligence is not fixed, and challenging the myths about attainment starts with looking at how the mind works.
The five learning to learn moves
The plan, monitor, evaluate cycle is right, and it is too abstract to teach on a Tuesday. These five moves turn it into a sentence the teacher says and a thing the learner produces, one for each phase of a task. Printed as a strip, the table is the checklist.
Here is the set in one Year 7 science lesson: plan a fair test to find which paper towel holds the most water. Say the goal. The teacher says, "Before you touch anything, write one line: what will your results show at the end?" Each learner writes a goal sentence at the top of the sheet: "My results will show which towel holds the most water."
Choose the route. The teacher puts two methods on the board and says, "Pick one and tell me why in five words." The learner ticks a method and writes the reason: "same water, same time, weigh." Check midway. Ten minutes in, the teacher stops the room: "Read your goal line. Does what you have so far answer it? Tick or cross." Every learner marks the goal line, and the crosses are visible from the front.
Fix one thing. The teacher says, "If you crossed, change one thing now, not everything, and write what you changed in the margin." A learner who forgot to keep the water the same writes "same water" in the margin. Name what changed. At the end the teacher says, "Finish the sentence: next time I will..." The exit slip reads, "Next time I will check my goal before I pour anything."
| Move | What the teacher says | What the learner produces |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Say the goal | Before you start, write one line: what will your work show at the end? | One goal sentence at the top of the page. |
| 2. Choose the route | Pick one of the two methods on the board and say why in five words. | A ticked method and a five-word reason. |
| 3. Check midway | Stop. Read your goal line. Does what you have so far answer it? Tick or cross. | A tick or a cross beside the goal line. |
| 4. Fix one thing | If you crossed, change one thing now, not everything. Note what you changed. | One margin note naming the change. |
| 5. Name what changed | Finish this sentence: next time I will... | One sentence on the exit slip. |
Teach one move a week and keep the others silent. In week one the teacher says the goal line and the learners copy it. By week five the strip on the desk carries all five and the teacher's lines drop away.
The products are the evidence. A goal sentence, a tick, a margin note and an exit slip take a minute to read across a class, and they show who is steering their own work. The moves are the same in maths, history and PE; only the goal line and the routes change, so each subject teaches them again.
Learning to learn strategies: plan, monitor, evaluate
Every learning to learn strategy sits inside one cycle: plan how to tackle the task, monitor how it is going, then evaluate what worked. The EEF guidance report makes this cycle the spine of metacognitive teaching, and each of the principles below is a way of making one stage of it visible in a lesson (EEF, 2018).
Print the cycle for the wall or the desk: the metacognition cycle poster (A4, PDF). It carries the three questions, what a learner produces at each stage and what you will see when the routine is working.
Metacognitive skills help learners organise what they know and manage their time well. Memory techniques, such as memory palaces, do work. Spaced repetition and active recall are the core principles (Bjork & Bjork, 1992; Karpicke & Blunt, 2011).
A growth mindset matters too (Dweck, 2006). When learners understand how memory works and use these strategies, they learn more (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Learners need to learn how to learn, especially when teachers are not their primary source. Sejnowski and Oakley note useful learning techniques. These help learners build skills and manage time (Oakley & Sejnowski, 2018).
- Focused work, then a break. Attention drops long before a lesson ends. Split a task into two or three timed bursts with a short pause between them, and say why: the pause is where the brain files what it has just done. In a Year 8 history lesson that is twelve minutes on the source, a two-minute talk with a partner, then twelve minutes of writing.
- Chunk before you start. A big topic is learnt as a set of small pieces that later join up. Show the whole shape first (the four causes, the three steps), then teach one piece at a time and name where it sits. Learners who can say "this is part two of four" hold the topic better than learners who meet it as a stream.
- Test, do not reread. Reading a page again feels like learning and is not (Brown et al., 2014). Close the book, write down what you remember, then check. Pulling an idea from memory strengthens it far more than looking at it again (Karpicke and Roediger, 2008); our guide to retrieval practice has the routines.
- Catch the illusion of competence. Highlighting and copying make the page look worked without changing what the learner knows (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Replace them with a one-line summary written from memory, or with explaining the idea to a partner who is allowed to ask why.
- Short, frequent checks. A five-question quiz at the start of each lesson tells the learner what they actually know, where a reread only tells them what looks familiar. Getting a question wrong and correcting it is part of the learning, not a sign it has failed.
What learning to learn techniques work best?
The techniques with the strongest evidence are retrieval practice, spaced practice and self-explanation, and the weakest are rereading and highlighting (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Which one fits depends on the learning task and the time you have. Our guide to thinking strategies sets them out in detail.
Four routes into the same idea, each with a guide on this site:
- Graphic organisers give learners a shape to think inside, so the knowledge is chunked as it is met. The chunk, or schema, is what later learning attaches to.
- Oracy routines, because saying a plan out loud to a partner is the easiest first version of planning it at all.
- SOLO taxonomy and the thinking framework, which give a class shared words for how deep the learning has gone.
- A learning log in the back of the exercise book: one line at the end of each week on what changed and what to try next.
How to teach learning to learn inside a lesson, not as a separate course
Teach the strategy at the point in the lesson where learners need it, using the content they are already working on. A stand-alone study skills course gives learners a vocabulary; a strategy modelled inside a maths problem or a history source gives them a habit. The move is always the same: show your own thinking, give learners a short check to run themselves, then ask them to judge the result.
In a Year 3 maths lesson on column addition the teacher works one example on the board while thinking aloud: "I line up the units first, then I check whether I need to carry." Learners then attempt three questions with a two-item check card on the desk: units lined up, carry recorded. Halfway through, the teacher pauses the room and every learner ticks or corrects each item. At the end each learner says one thing they would change on the next question.
In a Year 10 history lesson the teacher opens with a five-question retrieval starter on the causes of the First World War, answered from memory before books open. At ten minutes the teacher stops the source analysis and asks pairs to say whether their notes answer the question set or merely describe the source. The exit ticket asks for the answer and the name of the strategy used to get there. This is where the evidence sits: Higgins and the EEF find that gains from metacognitive teaching are largest when the strategy is taught inside the subject rather than as a separate course (EEF, 2018).
How can learners adopt effective learning to learn strategies?
Learners benefit from using a few proven techniques well. Chunking information (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) and recall helps learning. Focus on one strategy, practise it, and add more as habits form (Brown et al., 2014). Learners should reflect on what works best to personalise learning (Bjork & Bjork, 1992).
Introduce one technique at a time and let it become a habit before adding the next. The five below have the strongest evidence in the research on learning techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013), and each can be run inside an ordinary lesson.
- Space the practice. Three short returns to a topic across a fortnight beat one long session on it. Plan the returns into the scheme of work rather than hoping for them; our guide to spaced practice shows how, and why it moves knowledge into long-term memory.
- Mix the problem types. Once the basics are secure, a practice set that mixes question types outperforms one that repeats a single type, because learners have to choose the method as well as run it (Rohrer and Taylor, 2007). See our guide to interleaving.
- Start small when a learner is stuck. Procrastination is usually a task that looks too big. Name the first two minutes of work out loud ("write the title and the first sentence") and let the rest follow.
- Reach for an analogy. A new idea sticks to an old one. "A cell membrane is a bouncer, not a wall" gives a learner somewhere to put the new knowledge, as long as you also say where the analogy breaks.
- Explain it to a partner. Talking a method through to someone who may ask why exposes the gaps a silent reread hides. Pair the explanation with one question the listener must ask.
Practice table · Build It · Learning to learn
What learning to learn looks like in practice
Eleven routines from United States and UK classrooms, described on social media between June and September 2026. Each quote is verbatim and keeps the writer's own words. A row names the country where the writer states it.
| Routine, as teachers describe it | What you would notice | What the evidence says |
|---|---|---|
| Silent start to the Do Now A short recall task on the desk as learners walk in, done in silence, so the first three minutes are retrieval rather than settling.
|
US classroom. Learners writing before the register. No talking at the door. The teacher reading answers over shoulders rather than taking the first hand. | Karpicke and Roediger (2008): recalling material, rather than restudying it, produced the retention a week later. EEF (2018) recommends teaching strategies inside the subject, so a recall task on yesterday's content sits closer to the evidence than a generic study-skills slot. One teacher's account is not a trial of silence. |
| Open with last lesson's questions, and everyone answers Start the lesson with questions on previous learning and take an answer from everyone, not from the one hand that goes up.
|
US classroom. Every learner with a whiteboard or a written line before anyone speaks. The teacher scanning the room and choosing who explains, not who volunteers. | Dunlosky et al. (2013) rate practice testing as high utility across ages and subjects. The gain is in the attempt to recall, so a question one learner answers is retrieval for one learner. The thread is from a teacher who is also an advocate, and it is a claim, not a measure. |
| Tell the class what the move is for Say out loud what the task is meant to do to their thinking before they start it, so the goal is named rather than guessed.
|
A one-line purpose on the board beside the task. Learners able to say what the activity is for when asked, not only what to do. | EEF (2018) recommends explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies and modelling your own thinking, so naming what a task is for sits on the evidence. This is the say the goal move on this page. One design teacher's experience, with no replies, not a measure. |
| Whiteboards, cold call, choral response, turn and talk Use a whiteboard, a cold call, a choral answer or a partner turn so that everyone has an answer ready and expects to give it.
|
US classroom. Boards up on a count. Names drawn, not hands. Pairs given thirty seconds before the room hears one answer. Nobody sitting the question out. | Karpicke and Roediger (2008) found the retention gain came from repeated recall, not repeated exposure, so a routine that makes every learner recall is the routine the evidence describes. Brown et al. (2014) make the same point about effort in recall. Same thread as the row above, still a claim. |
| Quiz them rather than re-teach it Quiz the class on last week's content instead of re-explaining it, and let the answers show what is secure.
|
US classroom. A low-stakes quiz that is not graded. Learners marking their own, then the teacher reteaching one item the room got wrong. | Dunlosky et al. (2013) note practice testing works best when feedback follows, so the quiz earns its time when a wrong answer is corrected in the room. Karpicke and Roediger (2008) also found learners cannot feel the benefit in advance, which fits a teacher being surprised. One report. |
| Cornell notes and a summary, checked in the room Notes with a cue column and a summary in the learner's own words, then a whole-class check while a few learners read theirs aloud.
|
A cue column filled in after the explanation, not during it. Three learners reading a summary aloud while the teacher checks the rest. | Dunlosky et al. (2013) rate summarising as low utility on its own, and note it helps once learners have been taught how to do it. A cue column that learners later cover and answer from turns the notes into a self-test, which is the part Karpicke and Roediger (2008) support. A history teacher's reply, not a measure. |
| Try four note formats and pick one Give the class one topic and four ways to take notes on it, then ask each learner which one they will use next time and why.
|
US classroom. Four different pages on four desks for the same content. Learners naming a format and a reason at the end, not only a preference. | EEF (2018) recommends teaching learners to plan which strategy to use and to evaluate it afterwards, which is what a comparison lesson does. Brown et al. (2014) warn that what feels easiest is not always what holds, so the reason matters more than the choice. A school account's post, not a measure. |
| Model the moment of being stuck In a think-aloud, say the stuck line, go back and reread, then ask for help, so the class hears the recovery and not only the answer.
|
US classroom. The teacher pausing mid-text and saying the stuck line without hurry. Learners with a card that says what to do when it stops making sense. | EEF (2018) recommends modelling your own thinking, including the point where one strategy fails and another is chosen. The script is the check midway and fix one thing moves, said aloud. It comes from a literacy teacher educator, not a classroom report. No trial. |
| Retrieval starter in the book, not on the whiteboard Four or five short questions on last lesson, answered in the exercise book so the learner can correct the answer and find it again next week. The whiteboard is for the check, not the answer.
|
UK secondary history. Books open at the start, a written line each, the correction visible beside it a week later. The post is a reply under an observation-feedback thread; several heads of department argued the same. | Roediger and Karpicke (2006) found the test is what strengthens the memory, and no study in that line names the surface it sits on. Karpicke and Roediger (2008) found the retrieval attempt does the work. Choose the surface by whether the learner can correct it. This is a thread, not a trial. |
| Short check on the board, deeper answer in the book A multiple-choice vocabulary check on mini whiteboards straight after the retrieval, so the teacher sees every answer at once, then the extended answer written in the book.
|
UK secondary English. Boards up for the one-word check, then heads down for the paragraph. The teacher choosing who explains from what the boards showed, not from hands. | EEF (2018) puts the check on what learners actually know before independent practice, and a whole-class visible check is one way to run it. One department's routine, described in a reply, not a measure. |
| A revision skills workshop, once A one-off session for a year group listing the techniques: retrieval, flashcards, mind maps, self-quizzing. Then the year group goes back to lessons where nothing in the routine changed.
|
UK secondary, a Year 10 workshop advertised by the school. This is what UK schools posted about learning to learn: a workshop, a parents' evening or a weekly quiz, not a routine inside a lesson. | Dignath and Büttner (2008) found the gains larger when the training ran inside a subject, and Donker et al. (2014) found them on the researchers' own tests. EEF (2018) says teach the strategy in the content. A workshop gives the vocabulary; the routine has to run in the lesson. A school's post, not an evaluation. |
These are teachers' own accounts, not trial evidence. Each quotation preserves the writer's words.
How can schools develop a learning to learn culture?
Metacognitive training for teachers builds a positive school culture. Use these strategies across subjects and year groups. Learners should think about how they learn. The shortest route is one shared routine, such as a two-minute retrieval starter in every lesson, so learners meet the same technique in every subject.
They can share strategies and celebrate growth. Learning journals and peer mentoring help here. Give learners time to talk about the techniques they use (Flavell, 1979; Hattie, 2012; Dweck, 2006).
Learning gets learners ready for the tasks that matter in life. Every modern organisation needs people who can learn well (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993). So the benefits reach well beyond the classroom.
Learning styles theory (VAK or VARK) has been tested and found wanting (Pashler et al., 2008; Kirschner, 2017). Varying how you present material still helps, because it gives learners more than one route into the same idea, not because each learner has a style.
Learners should try each technique and judge it by results, not by how it feels. Rereading feels productive and is weak; retrieval feels hard and works (Bjork & Bjork, 1992; Dunlosky et al., 2013).
To help learners remember as much as possible, build repetition and practice into lessons. Flashcards and quizzes are two simple ways to do this. They go over key ideas again and help fix them in the learner's mind.
A supportive classroom helps memory. When learners feel at ease, they keep more of what they learn and put it to good use. Teachers can use these methods to help learners keep on learning.
Study skills, or learning to learn skills, give children a real boost. They teach them 'how to learn' and how to do well in school. Metacognitive skills play a key part in building the critical thinking skills a learner needs for lifelong learning and academic success.
This is not a quick fix, and it needs one shared routine that every subject uses. Teachers should also help learners notice metacognitive experiences. These are the real-time feelings of difficulty or confidence during a task, and they guide whether to keep going with a strategy or switch to another.
What learning to learn looks like by phase
The five moves do not change across the school. What changes is how much of each move the teacher carries and what the learner's product looks like.
Reception and Key Stage 1. The teacher carries the moves out loud and the product is a gesture or a word. In a Year 1 writing lesson the teacher says, "Say your sentence to your partner, then count the words on your fingers." The learner holds up five fingers, writes, then counts the words on the page against the fingers. A match is the tick; a miss means "find the word you dropped".
Key Stage 2. The learner writes the moves down and the teacher checks them. In a Year 5 maths lesson on a two-step word problem the learner writes the goal line: "I need the total cost." They choose a bar model or a column method, say why, and at the midway stop check the answer against an estimate made before starting. The exit slip names one thing they would do differently on the next problem.
Secondary. The moves shrink to a prompt card and the products go in the margin of the book. In a Year 9 geography six-mark explain question the learner turns the command word into a goal line, with point, evidence, explain as the route. At the midway stop they check whether each sentence answers "why". The teacher reads the margin notes, not the essays, to see who is monitoring.
What resources help teachers implement learning to learn strategies?
Start with the EEF's research on metacognition. Books on memory techniques and the science of learning are also worth reading. Guides to growth mindset help teachers too (Dweck, 2006). The three below are free, evidence-based and written for teachers rather than researchers.
Look for materials that mix theory with things you can do in class. Courses on teaching metacognition offer hands-on training (EEF, 2018).
Three resources do most of the work, and all three are free:
- The EEF guidance report on metacognition and self-regulated learning (EEF, 2018): seven recommendations, each with the classroom moves that meet it.
- The Learning Scientists' six strategies posters: spacing, retrieval, interleaving, elaboration, concrete examples and dual coding, one page each, ready for a classroom wall.
- Make It Stick (Brown et al., 2014): the book to hand a department that wants the evidence behind retrieval and spacing in plain English.
The deck is a twelve-slide briefing on how memory works, for a staff meeting: the forgetting curve, chunking, focused and diffused thinking, the illusion of competence and a drip-feed plan for a term. Use it to open the conversation, then hand out the five-move table on this page as the routine.
Whatever you choose, judge it by one test: does it give learners a move they can run without you? A routine that only works when the teacher prompts it has not been learnt yet. Spacing, retrieval and interleaving all pass that test once the learner owns the timing (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Limitations and Critiques
The most direct criticism of learning to learn as a school aim is that it can be taught as a set of general habits divorced from any subject. The EEF guidance argues the opposite: metacognitive knowledge is largely domain-specific, and a strategy modelled in maths does not transfer to history without being taught again there (EEF, 2018). Dignath and Büttner (2008) found in their meta-analysis that the gains were larger when the training ran inside a subject such as mathematics, and larger again when researchers rather than the class teacher delivered it. Donker et al. (2014) add that effects were bigger on the researchers' own tests than on independent ones, so a school running this with its own staff should expect smaller gains than the headline figures. A course called "learning to learn" on the timetable is therefore the weakest version of the idea.
The evidence base has a methods problem. Much of the retrieval and spacing research on which this guide draws was run with undergraduates in laboratories, and Dunlosky et al. (2013) themselves rated several popular techniques as low utility partly because classroom trials were thin. Metacognition is also hard to measure: Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters and Afflerbach (2006) showed that self-report questionnaires correlate poorly with what learners actually do during a task, so studies that rely on them may overstate effects.
Two popular companions to this topic have not survived scrutiny. Learning styles instruction has no supporting evidence (Pashler et al., 2008), and Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023) found that growth mindset interventions have negligible effects on achievement once study quality is accounted for. Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) add a further caution: asking novices to manage their own learning with minimal guidance overloads working memory rather than building independence.
Most trials are drawn from North American and European schools, so claims about universal effects should be read with care. Even so, the core practice of teaching learners to plan, monitor and evaluate inside subject content remains one of the best-supported, lowest-cost approaches available to a classroom teacher.
Putting it into practice · Build It · Learning to learn
The objections teachers raise
These are the objections teachers in the United States and the UK raised when a learning-to-learn routine met a real class, with our reply under each. Every quote is verbatim and keeps the writer's own words. One comes from a former learner, kept because it is the complaint teachers hear. A handle names the country where the writer states it.
objection
Attempts at retrieval of these topics constantly failing as there is no understanding to retrieve.
What the replies and the evidence say. The point stands, and the fix sits before the starter. Say the goal, then check the route: was the idea taught securely before anyone was asked to recall it? Dunlosky et al. (2013) found practice testing earns its place when feedback follows, so treat a failed recall as a reteach, not a score. Fix one thing, then ask again next week.
objection
But I'd argue that it was over-scaffolded. The content was spoon-fed.
What the replies and the evidence say. A strong lesson can still think for the class. The five moves are meant to fade: say the goal once, let learners choose the route, and take the sentence stems away as soon as the midway check shows they can manage. EEF (2018) puts independent practice after guided practice, not instead of it. Name what changed once the scaffold is off.
objection
If students don't enter silently, I have them go out and enter again. Yesterday, I felt so mean at the beginning of the day.
What the replies and the evidence say. It can feel harsh, and the neighbouring room may not be doing it. What makes it fair is saying the goal: the first three minutes are for recalling yesterday, and the quiet protects that. Brown et al. (2014) describe why recall feels harder than rereading and holds better. Ask for a written answer from everyone, then use one to start the teaching.
objection
Even then maybe 5% of my students use it.
What the replies and the evidence say. A resource handed over is not a routine. The same thread agreed that tools serve learners who already study alone. So bring the check into the room: choose the route together, do the first recall in the lesson, and check midway who can manage without the card. Dunlosky et al. (2013) rate practice testing highly, but only a test that happens counts.
objection
Do you have any parents who respond?
What the replies and the evidence say. @SoLInTheWild, who was asked, replied Occasionally.
Write the note anyway, but write it for the learner first. A sentence on the board naming what changed since last week, in their words, does more than an email home. Rohrer and Taylor (2007) found mixed practice feels worse and tests better, which is the line to give families when the work feels hard.
objection
I remember back in high school having to write like a hundred Cornell notes a month for AVID #worstclassever
What the replies and the evidence say. That is a former learner, not a teacher, remembering a quota. Teachers in the same posts want the organiser taught and checked in the lesson: a cue column, a summary in the learner's own words, then a whole-class check while a few read theirs aloud. Dunlosky et al. (2013) rate summarising low unless it is taught. One organiser, checked, beats a hundred filed.
objection
teaching your students about "the science of learning" as a discrete thing for any more than like 20 minutes is not a good use of time
What the replies and the evidence say. Agreed, and this page says the same: a learning to learn course on the timetable is the weakest version of the idea. The five moves are not a lesson about memory. They are a goal said out loud, a route chosen, a check midway, one correction and a name for what changed, inside the subject you were teaching anyway. Dignath and Büttner (2008) found the gains larger inside a subject, and EEF (2018) says teach the strategy in the content. Twenty minutes on the science is plenty; the routine is the rest of the year.
objection
Nobody implements "metacognition". They implement something they take on trust to be metacognition, usually the cheapest and most superficially looking version: exit tickets, laminated posters of plan, monitor, evaluate, a "learning to learn" CPD session for teachers.
What the replies and the evidence say. The poster and the CPD session are the surface, and the criticism has data behind it: Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters and Afflerbach (2006) showed self-report cannot tell you whether any of it happened. What survives contact with a room is smaller than a programme: one move, modelled by the teacher, checked against a product the learner made in the lesson. If the only evidence is the laminated poster, nothing was implemented.
Print the five-move table, cut it into a desk strip, and run only the first move in your next lesson. Say the goal line yourself and have every learner copy it at the top of the page. Then stop the room once to ask whether the work so far answers it. Read the ticks and crosses from the front. That single check, inside the content you were teaching anyway, is where learning to learn starts.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is 'learning to learn' and why is it important for learners?
Learners need strategies that work. Managing their time and the information they take in helps (Bjork et al., 2013). Metacognition helps learners understand how their own memory works (Flavell, 1979).
Active recall and spaced repetition are two strategies that work well (Dunlosky et al., 2013). These skills help learners work on their own, and that matters long after they leave school.
Metacognitive knowledge includes 'what', 'how', and 'when/why' (Paris et al., 1983). Learners find conditional knowledge the hardest. Paris et al. (1983) suggest that conditional knowledge gives the best transfer across subjects.
How can teachers help learners avoid 'illusions of competence' when learning new material?
Highlighting doesn't aid learning, say researchers (Brown et al., 2014). Teachers should ask learners to write short summaries instead. Regular recall exercises with tests help transfer knowledge to long-term memory (Karpicke and Roediger, 2008). This gives reliable feedback on learner understanding.
What is the chunking technique and how can educators implement it in their classrooms?
Chunking breaks down complex ideas. Teachers can help learners see the big picture (survey the syllabus). Show examples, let learners practise, and repeat in varied contexts. Graphic organisers help learners structure knowledge packets.
How should teachers balance focussed and diffused learning modes during lessons?
Build in regular breaks. One way is the Pomodoro method, where learners work for 25 minutes and then rest for 5. This unfocused time matters as much as focused work, because it gives the brain a chance to sort and store new information. During breaks, encourage calm activities such as meditation, or simply let minds wander.
What practical tools can teachers use to develop learners' 'learning to learn' skills?
Teachers can use graphic organisers to structure information. Mind maps help learners sort their ideas. Learning journals let learners record tasks and think about their progress.
Use the Universal Thinking Framework and Bloom's taxonomy to plan learning. Oracy, which means talking and listening skills, helps learners explore different ways of thinking.
How can retrieval practice be effectively incorporated into daily teaching routines?
Teachers, have learners recall key topics to move knowledge to long-term memory. (Brown, Roediger & McDaniel, 2014) Learners should recall concepts in new places. (Smith, Glenberg & Bjork, 1978) Regular quizzes and self-assessment help learning and find gaps. (Black & Wiliam, 1998)
What does learning to learn mean?
Learning to learn means knowing how to plan a task, check how it is going and decide what to change next time, and doing those things without being told. It is not a subject or a study skills course. It is a set of routines a learner runs on real content, in maths, history or science, and the routines are taught by a teacher who shows them first.
What are learning to learn skills?
Learning to learn skills are the moves a learner makes around the content: setting a goal, choosing a method, checking work midway, correcting one thing and naming what changed. Retrieval, spacing and self-explanation are the techniques with the strongest evidence; highlighting and rereading are the weakest. The five moves on this page are those skills written as things a learner says and produces.
How do you teach learning to learn?
Teach one move at a time, inside the lesson you were going to teach anyway. Say the thinking out loud ("Before I start, my goal is..."). Have learners copy the move with a visible product, such as a goal line or a tick, then stop the room once to check it. Add the next move the following week. A separate learning to learn course gives learners a vocabulary; a move practised in every subject gives them a habit.
Is learning to learn the same as metacognition?
Not quite. Metacognition is the thinking about your own thinking: knowing what you know and steering your own planning, monitoring and evaluation (Brown, 1987). Learning to learn is the broader competence built on it, which also takes in how a learner manages time, organises information and keeps going when a task is hard. Metacognition is the engine; learning to learn is the whole vehicle.
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