On Cultivating The Senior Middle School Students' Metacognition Ability In Chemistry

The future society is to be a learning society, in which learning to learn is the most important to everybody. Teaching should be aimed at fostering the students' ability to study on their own. Metacognition is awareness of one's own thinking; it is thinking about thinking. Metacognition plays a critical role in successful learning, because it is the theoretical foundation and the effective way of learning. Metacognition refers to higher order thinking, which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Metacognition consists of three basic elements: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive feel and metacognitive control. It can help students to regulate and monitor themselves in their cognitive activities. In the processing of chemistry teaching, teachers should exert themselves to develop the students' metacognition ability, making the students learn to learn. The following are some teaching strategies: First, teachers should develop their own metacognition ability so that they can guide their students in an effective way. Second, teachers should optimize their classroom teaching, and encourage their students to take an active part in the class, which can assure students' metacognitive activity. Third, Metacognition is the process of thinking about thinking. Cognitive and metacognitive activities are closely intertwined and dependent upon each other, any attempt without acknowledging the other would not take effect. Thus, developing students' metacognitive ability is closely relevant to their thinking or learning processes. Fourth, metacognitive training emphasizes the development of thinking skillsand processes as a means to enhance learning. Here are some effective ways we have got in our teaching. For example, teachers should show their students how to take notes, require them to discuss the metacognitive activities, provide a chance for them to receive feedback, teach them how to develop questions and ask questions of themselves, and guide them to do self-regulating. Fifth, teachers should evaluate the outcomes of the students' efforts in a scientific way to develop their metacognitive ability for more effective learning.Based on the strategies above, we have tried the method keeping a diary of what you learnt in chemistry and have a good result.