PLE #4

What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know and be able to do that relate to cognitive learning? 

One thing that is important for students to realize is that they are often in control of their own learning. This can be done my actively listening or taking notes in older grades and even doing activities such as writing down a fact you learned while a story is being read aloud in younger grades.  Students also can make connections to their prior knowledge or make sense of a difficult concept my creating their own way of thinking about it.

Although metacognition seems like a very abstract task if used correctly you can begin to make young children aware of their thought process.  It can be described through concrete examples and then as the student’s abilities grow they will not have to be as aware of their metacognition  I think the earlier that this is brought up to children the easier it will be for them to master and make sense of more difficult concepts in the future.

This is a link to an article I found particularly interesting. Many schools are now serving breakfast for their students when they arrive and I frequently see students eating on their favorite Coco puff cereal. This article makes the argument for breakfast foods that have higher protein and other sources of energy and how it can help increase their cognitive abilities during the school day.

http://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/spacelab/pubs/MahoneyEtAl.pdf