Metacognition was, for some time, the “in” thing in education. Following a raft of blogs and research reports, it was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. But then the concept slowly edged away from the spotlight, as teachers began to find it difficult to pin down or use it practically in lessons.

The definition of metacognition is relatively simple: thinking about your own learning. And the positive impact of strategies to enable self-reflection on learning has been found to be substantial. So why has the conversation about the approach gone quiet?

Dulcinea Norton-Morris, who has rolled out a metacognitive approach in EYFS, provides some insights on making it work.

Tes: People seem to find metacognition quite tricky to grasp - why do you think that is?

Dulcinea Norton-Morris: It’s true that a lot of people have yet to explore using metacognition in their classroom, and particularly in early years. I think this is because people believe that metacognition is more complicated than it is. It’s a word that makes some educators worry that, if they don’t know what it means, then they aren’t as smart as their peers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Metacognition is, quite simply, thinking about thinking.

Is it something that comes more naturally to some learners than others?

Metacognition comes naturally to everyone, as it is not about what we know, but about how we think and learn. It is accessible to all children, no matter their age or ability. Children access metacognition at different levels, but all children can benefit from a metacognitive approach.

Even children in EYFS, in your view?

Yes. I was initially concerned that metacognition was an approach that would not be developmentally appropriate until key stage 1. As I read more, however, I realised that metacognition is a collection of skills that are present from birth.

Take the metacognitive strategy of thinking ahead, for example. Five-year-olds may think ahead to holidays, birthdays or their Christmas list. Four-year-olds may think ahead to what they are doing that weekend and three-year-olds to what they want to play with when they go off to choose activities. Two-year-olds are thinking ahead, too. When you get their coat, they may come to put it on, then go towards the door, anticipating that they are going outside. They may not be able to explain to you how they are thinking, but that is where we come in. If we take a metacognitive approach to teaching, then we can begin to understand how each incredible little brain in our care works.

This is something you have looked closely at - can you tell us how you tackle it in your setting?

We teach metacognition through games. There are games created especially to practise a skill and also games that we would play anyway, but with a focus on metacognition.

So, for example, there is a tower-building game. I ask children to think ahead and guess how many bricks high I can build a tower. In doing this, they are practising some metacognitive skills: thinking ahead, understanding a question, giving a relevant response and sizing (subitising). This last skill can be a useful baseline to see each child’s understanding of number. Children may have an accurate concept of number (guessing 10 bricks) or not (guessing 1,000 bricks). Once the tower has fallen over, the children think back and figure out what went wrong, then formulate how to build the tower bigger next time. These are all metacognitive skills.

I then leave the bricks out for the rest of the session and we see children playing in this area, and with more purpose than they would have usually done, as they continue the activity without an adult present.

We take this approach in everything we do, from planning activities to joining in play and conversations. To take a metacognitive approach in your classroom, you just need to focus more heavily on how children learn than what they need to learn, and the “what” will naturally follow.

What are the key challenges to the approach?

The biggest challenge is not one presented by the children, but by practitioners. Because “metacognition” sounds very academic, many practitioners are concerned that it is too complicated. What practitioners often don’t realise is that they are already taking this approach to some degree, even more so in recent years when most settings have become proponents of child-led and open-ended play and resources. Metacognitive approaches, however, focus on thinking skills and not on academic expectations, and so they are developmentally appropriate at any stage and for any child.

What is the impact of it?

A metacognitive approach benefits children most in social development, emotional understanding and self-regulation, language and communication, mathematics and understanding of the natural world.

My love of metacognition is more focused on the long-term benefits, though. Metacognitive approaches help us to build creative and critical thinkers. The challenges of social media, politics, fake news, peer pressure, prejudice, extremism and grooming mean that it is essential that we do everything we can as educators to support children to be able to assess situations critically and make informed decisions, and that we do it from a young age.

An awareness of the power of thought processes will also help children to understand their own mental health and wellbeing as they grow up.

What are your plans for the future?

I recently co-published a book on metacognition from birth to age 5 and am now working on a book of metacognitive lesson plans for circle times. And within my classroom I am trialling my 39-week scheme, which has a different metacognitive focus each week, and so far it is going well.

Dulcinea Norton-Morris is an early years teacher at St Leonard’s C of E Primary School, Padiham, and author of Beautiful Thinking: metacognition in the early years

This article originally appeared in the 20 November 2020 issue under the headline “How I…took a metacognitive approach to EYFS”