How Meta-Cognitive Skills Create Better Learners and Stronger Students

The Surprising Reason Even Smart Kids Can Struggle in School

As an involved parent, you do everything you can to give your children the best education possible, one that nurtures their natural talents and helps them maximize their potential. Maybe you even hope your children thrive in an academic environment—that they bring home good grades and look forward to attending school each day.

However, even the most intelligent children can struggle in school. Did you know that high IQs and above-average intelligence aren’t necessarily associated with good grades?

Why does this happen?

Ultimately, intelligence is only half the battle. Your children call upon additional skills—ones that educators call meta-cognitive skills and executive function skills—to help them thrive in a school environment.

Some children develop these skills naturally. Others need a little extra help. And still other students who have shown early promise can get a jump on their academic career by strengthening these skills at a young age.

In this article, we’ll show you how meta-cognitive skills can help your child perform better in school—and beyond. Once they master these abilities, your children will find it easy to become stand-out students who learn well, bring home top report cards and score to their potential on the tests they take.

Whether your aim is to help a struggling student do better in school—or whether you have a child who shows incredible potential that you want to foster—strengthening these skills will put your child at the top of the class.

Let’s start by examining exactly what these meta-cognitive skills are. (And if you’d like to learn more about executive function skills, check out our article, “Developing the Skills That Help Kids Thrive in School: Executive Functions.”)

What Is Meta-Cognition?

Meta-cognition involves being aware of your own learning and thinking patterns.[i]

In other words, meta-cognition means thinking about how you think and learn.

When it comes to helping your children learn better in a school setting, meta-cognition entails helping them:

Better understand their own thought processes.
Develop the skills they need to take charge of their learning.[ii]

To give you some examples, this can involve consciously developing the ability to:

Listen more effectively so that they can understand and take action based on what they’re told.
Follow directions and execute on a task that either you or their teacher has given them.
Develop the focus to finish an assignment like a homework worksheet without getting distracted.
Develop impulse control that’s critical to good classroom behavior (or in the grocery store when you’re running errands together!)

This field is still developing, so new research is emerging constantly. We’ll share some recent studies in the next section.

The bottom line is that educators and researchers are realizing that meta-cognitive skills are helping kids become better students, ones who thrive in a classroom environment.

Additionally, educators have been exploring ways to incorporate meta-cognitive learning into the classroom, as time permits.

One technique teachers are using is asking students to keep learning journals.[iii] At the end of the week, they can ask themselves things like:

“What was the most challenging part of school this week?” or “What was the easiest?”
“What was the hardest homework I did this week? What made it difficult?”
“How did I prepare differently for this week’s math test? Did it make it easier or harder?”

How Do Meta-Cognitive Skills Create Better Students?

Meet Sarah, who is five years old, and Justin, her dad. Sarah going through a phase where she throws a temper tantrum at the grocery store more often than not.

Most of the time, the meltdown occurs at the checkout, when Sarah grabs a chocolate bar and throws it onto the conveyor belt. Justin asks her to put it back . . . and you can probably guess what happens from here.

From a psychological standpoint, Sarah hasn’t yet developed her impulse control and self-regulation skills. She sees a candy bar, she wants it and so she grabs it and throws it in with the rest of the groceries.

Think about how you might approach this scenario as an adult:

You see a candy bar and you probably go through some kind of decision process before grab it.
You might think about what you’ve eaten that day and whether a candy bar fits in.
You might wonder if you have the cash to cover it in your wallet.
You might also consider whether you want an Almond Joy or a Snickers.

Even if you decide to buy that candy bar, you’ve likely gone through some kind of thought process, one that Sarah yet doesn’t have access to.

While this is developmentally appropriate for her age, it’s also a good time for Sarah to work on strengthening her impulse control and self-regulation.

But how does this candy bar scenario translate to classroom behavior?

Kids with weaker impulse and self-control might yell out in the middle of a lesson, interrupt the teacher or say inappropriate things to their teachers and peers.

- This can strain relationships at school.
- Your child also might not understand why these things are “wrong,” and feel hurt that he or she keeps getting negative feedback.

All of these things can lead to children feeling alienated at school, ones who stop wanting to participate and may even resist going to school at all.

However, children who are able to develop self-regulation and impulse control find it easier to flourish in a school environment. They’ll behave appropriately in the classroom. They’ll follow the teacher’s instructions to finish their worksheets, even if they’d rather go to the play area and make a Lego castle.

In the long term, these skills have significant effects:

A study in Developmental Psychology found that kids with better self-regulation (impulse control is a huge part of this!) ended up with higher levels of mathematics, literacy and vocabulary skills.
Another study found that self-discipline was a better predictor of college grades than SAT scores.

When you extend this research and look at additional meta-cognitive skills, you’ll also see that:

Children who were taught listening strategies demonstrated stronger improvement on the Listening Comprehension Subtest of the Stanford Early School Achievement Test (SESAT).[iv]
Strong attention skills in Kindergarten have been directly linked to first and third grade math and reading achievement, as well as overall school readiness.[v]
A study revealed that working memory contributes to higher math and reading performance, as measured by standardized testing scores.[vi]
Middle school students who studied their own brain processes and discovered “learning changes the brain by forming new neurological connections and that students are in charge of this change process” worked harder and performed better than students in control groups.[vii]

You might wonder why these skills aren’t being taught more in school. Some teachers may simply not have enough time to focus on “learning how to learn.” Others don’t have the time or resources to assess every child and deliver the skills that help each individual child reach their potential.

As a result, your children may be missing a few of the skills they need to thrive in school. When this happens, they may not make the connection between what they’re learning and what it means. They might end up feeling bored and disengaged. Perhaps they’ll bring home a less-than-stellar report card. Or they could just decide they don’t like school altogether.

If you see this happening with your student—or you simply want to equip your child with all the skills he or she needs to excel in school—it is possible to strengthen meta-cognitive skills.

How Can Parents Help Develop Meta-Cognitive Skills?

Just as some teachers lead their students into inquiries about their learning, you can do the same thing with your children. Try questions like:

“What was the hardest thing you did in school this week?”
“What was the most fun?”
“What was the easiest thing you did?”
“Was there anything you found confusing or hard to understand this week?”
“What’s the hardest homework assignment you had this week? Why do you think it was so tough?”
“What kind of homework do you wish your teacher gave more often? Why?”
“Did you have any quizzes this week? How did you prepare for them? Did it easier or harder? What do you think you could do differently next time?”

As a bonus, these exploratory questions may interest your child more than the classic, “What did you learn in school today?”

You can also investigate learning tools designed specifically to strengthen meta-cognitive skills, such as GoGoBrain.

GoGo Brain is an interactive online learning platform that strengthens seven critical meta-cognitive skills in just 15-30 minutes a day.

While playing GoGoBrain, children travel through the galaxy, answering questions, playing games and earning space gems to upgrade their spaceship. They think it’s a game, but we know they’re on their way to becoming better learners.

To discover how GoGoBrain can help your children become Super Students who thrive in the classroom and beyond, visit http://GoGoBrain.com.

Whatever route you choose, you’ve already taken the first step by discovering the impact of meta-cognitive skills. When you can help your child strengthen this set of abilities, you’ll help them excel in many different scenarios, both in and out of the classroom.

Plus, when you pair strong meta-cognitive skills with highly developed executive function skills, you’ll give your children a full set of tools that will help them leverage their natural talents to their best abilities and maximize their potential.