7 LEARNING HOW TO LEARN SKILLS

1. EMPOWER Thursday,January6, 2022
EMPOWER….ASERIES on Helping children/youth to become agents oftheir ownlearning by learning how tolearn.
ENGAGEMENT: Focus on a particular topic, task, orskill
METACOGNTION: Understanding how your mind is working as you engageinlearning, ina task.
PURPOSE: Intention toengageinor complete a task to achievea particular end.
ORGANIZATION: Understanding and working to putall ofthe elements or pieces ofinformationtogetherinto a meaningfulwhole.
WORKING MEMORY: Holding onto elements or pieces ofinformationas youretrieveand/or storeexisting information in long term memory.
EXTENSION: Building a network or information/ideas andusing that knowledge ina variety ofcontexts.
REPRESENTATION: Choosing the formin which youmanipulateideas/information.
Preschoolseries Example #4 Time to paint
Engagement: Given the supplies and freedom, preschoolers areready to go.
Metacognition. This is often an individual activity, in which a child does not need
to engage in conversation aboutit.
Purpose. Given the freedomto choosetopic, style and supplies, the child should
be able to carry out this activity independently.
Organize. Unless this is the child’s firstexperience with painting, s/he should be
able to proceed in his/her own way and pace.
Working Memory. The availability of the necessary supplies and familiarity with
the task, working memory skills areminimal.
Extension. The simplicity of this task/kind of task might be a good place to start
exploring how to simply change the task to make it slightly more challenging:
smaller canvas, using chalk, limiting choice of colors….
Representation. Given that directions are not likely to be needed in this task after
the early encounters with painting and the simplicity of the task, it is likely that
this information is readily available from long term memory.