Metacognition in Preschool

Metacognition, or the ability to think about one’s own thinking, is a powerful cognitive skill that enhances learning and problem-solving. While metacognition is often associated with older children and adults, research shows that the foundations of this skill can be nurtured even in preschool-aged children. In early childhood education, encouraging metacognitive development helps young learners understand how they think and learn, laying the groundwork for lifelong learning skills. Here’s a closer look at the role of metacognition in preschool education and strategies to foster it in young children.

My 3-year-old granddaughter has a lot to say. Much of her conversation is with, or about, her stuffed animals—Unicorn,

Baby Hippo, Simba, and Nala—or about characters she has seen on TV—Moana, Bluey, Mickey Mouse, or Ryder from Paw Patrol. You get the idea.

Over the next 10–15 years of their lives, preschoolers’ social, emotional, and cognitive skills develop in extraordinary ways. From conversations with adults, peers, and older kids, my granddaughter will learn how to understand her emotions and the emotions of others as well as how to experience and enact empathy and compassion, how to problem-solve, and how to do so when facing obstacles. Educators (and parents) can set young people like my granddaughter on a positive trajectory.

SEL(f)-Questioning

Metacognition is the process of understanding and managing our thoughts and emotions. We are being metacognitive when we step back, consider the situation we’re in, reflect on our thoughts and feelings, bring up past related experiences, note similarities and differences with regard to the present, and then problem-solve and take necessary actions.

Being metacognitive means possessing social and emotional learning (SEL) skills like self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relating to others in varied situations, and ethical problem-solving. But it’s more than that. It means exercising a habit of reviewing, even questioning, our own emotions and thoughts. That habit starts early, and it’s one that we can and should explicitly encourage, starting with preschoolers.

The most foundational metacognitive skill is self-awareness. This is promoted by helping young children ask themselves SEL-oriented questions—i.e., SEL(f)-questions:

How am I feeling?

How do I know how I am feeling, or, what am I feeling?

What happened that led me to feel this way?

What can I do to feel/do better (or, if good, more of the same)?

Ways to Engage Preschoolers in Metacognition

1. Model self-talk. When situations happen, describe them and the feelings you are having, why you are feeling that way, and what you can do next (i.e., problem-solving). This literally involves speaking aloud your thoughts and feelings, in ways appropriate for young children. This kind of modeling gives children insight into how adults think. Here is an example based on a common situation:

The paints we were going to use in class are all dried out. I feel unhappy. I was looking forward to our painting tiles showing jobs you would like to have when you grow up. I am going to see if our markers will work, or else I will ask Mrs. Jamil if we can borrow her paints.

2. Model parallel talk. As situations occur, model what you are seeing in the child, how the child might be feeling and how you can tell, and what you think the child might want to do. This kind of modeling follows the general guidance of (a) describe the situation, (b) describe the child’s overt feelings, and (c) state what you think the child will do next, constructively. Here are two common examples:

Example 1: We are at the playground. Your face is smiling, and you are jumping up and down. You look like you feel happy and excited to be at the park. It looks like you are going to head over to the climbing bars or the see-saw.

Example 2: The toy you were playing with broke. Your face looks angry and maybe a little guilty because you were banging the toy on the floor. You are not sure what you can do next. It looks like you might clean up the broken parts and put them in the trash. Afterward, we can talk about how to play with toys so they are less likely to break.

3. Ask choice questions. As children face various situations, we can engage their cognitive activity best when we don’t “tell” them what to do. Of course, there are times when telling is necessary. That said, it’s valuable to be oriented toward helping them think about options and making choices.

Typically, give children two or three options to choose from. Even when constraining a situation because of time, logistics, etc., it’s usually possible to give children a choice. This is quite a common technique, but we don’t always appreciate its cognitive importance. Having children make even limited choices, like which center area of three to go to first, or which four color crayons to use for an art project, stimulates reflective thinking on the part of the child in a way that assigning a center or crayon colors does not.

4. Ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions don’t have a yes or no answer, and they prompt children‘s cognitive activity to generate a response—even a nonresponse. With consistent use, students start asking themselves these open-ended questions, thereby becoming more metacognitive. The following example, from a conversation with my granddaughter, illustrates all of these points and shows how open-ended questions model self-questioning for young children and stimulate their thought processes.

How are you feeling? (Sad.) Your face looks sad and your voice sounds sad. Why are you sad? What happened? (Unicorn is sick.) Unicorn is sick? I am so sorry to hear that. How do you know? (She was crying. And she has a fever.) Oh, I am so sorry. What are you going to do to help Unicorn feel better? (Give her medicine.) Giving her medicine seems helpful. What else can you do to help her? (Take her to the doctor.)

Rick Cohen and his colleagues also point out that gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, pictures, sounds, and sign language are other aspects of communication we can use to help model and communicate feelings. Having feelings posters in classrooms is an especially good way to build children’s feeling vocabulary and to help them connect their feelings to words.