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Dear friends,
Last week, in Part 1 of this post, I tried to express both how important metacognition is in PE and –perhaps even more importantly– how a lack of metacognitive strategies is likely to be the limiting factor for a PE student succeeding in skills such as AO2 and AO3 in their PE exams and PE coursework. The thing is, metacognition and the teaching of it in PE are not a nice-to-do. They are a must. Putting it bluntly, the students of the PE teacher on the right below are going to outperform the students of the PE teacher on the left.
Moreover, the nature of our much-loved-subject of PE makes metacognition highly relevant to us PE teachers and our PE students. In fact, in my opinion, metacognition is required more in PE theory learning than in pretty much any other area of a student’s education. Why do I make this claim?
Qualification PE learning is absolutely ripe for metacognitive techniques for the reasons shown above. Whilst I am confident other subject teachers may make equivalent claims, it is my job to express just how important metacognition is in PE.
Strategies
Let’s accept that metacognition is a must in PE. How do we actually do it? There are at least nine strategies to consider implementing as a base. Here they are:
It should be noted that these nine strategies are exam-board agnostic and do not consider, for example, the specific detail needed to plan and execute an AQA A-level 15-mark response. The strategies I am including above are the generic fundamentals that every PE teacher on every PE course should consider. Course-specific strategies need to be overlaid.
For example, from the options above, pre-assessments are extremely simple to implement. Let me give you an example:
You are about to teach a lesson on the cardiac system and circulation to a GCSE PE group and, before you start with any delivery, you allow your GCSE PE students to experience between five and 10 minutes of practice-mode quizzing on the cardiac system, blood, circulation, etc. Practice mode allows students to take quizzing on a topic without a time limit and with the security that their answers are not stored or scrutinised. All that is recorded is the time they spend. Consider a PE student who spends 10 minutes doing this quizzing on the new topic. They get some right, they get some wrong, but, more importantly, they get to reflect on what they already know, what they might be about to learn and also what they would like to learn. These pre-assessments are an excellent way for a PE teacher to build metacognition into a PE course and are considered a planning strategy:
Now, let’s return to our nine base strategies and focus on a different one. Let’s focus on metacognitive prompts from the monitoring strategies.
Metacognitive prompts are an exceptional way of encouraging PE students to reflect on their learning and, where necessary, to ask questions to their PE teacher or peers after considering the degree to which they understand a concept. Metacognitive prompts ask whether PE students truly understand an idea rather than trying to instruct that idea.
Please download this document and use it as a handout for your PE groups:
What not to do
Now you have downloaded your resource, I would like you to consider what absolutely not to do with metacognition in a PE department. Across schools, there are core errors that are being made that are possible to avoid. These processes do not work and should be avoided.
The items in this image are absolutely must-not-do actions with regard to metacognition in PE, and all readers are encouraged to consider these typical blunders and avoid them.
Learn more about metacognition in PE
If, after my two recent posts (you can find the blog on Metacognition Part 1 here), you are interested in the impact of metacognition in PE, you can learn much more deeply about the application of the principles in PE via the PE Teacher Academy. Please visit our brand new and PE-bespoke CPD environment soon.
Thank you for reading.
James Simms