Self-monitoring
Overview
When students monitor their comprehension, performance, and use of strategies when reading and writing, they build their Metacognition. Teaching students to self-assess their behavior based on clearly set goals helps develop their Self-regulation, and having them self-record their progress, adjustments, and performance also allows them to see their growth over time.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this teacher encourages her students to self-monitor by instructing them to set clear reading goals each week. By setting clear reading goals and shifting the responsibility of reflection to the students, she fosters student agency and accountability in their own understanding.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Learn how this prototype self-monitoring app prompts students to rate their behavior at regular intervals. Students reflect and self-assess their behavior against specific goals. By tracking their progress, students independently self-monitor how successful they are in reaching their goals.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Metacognitive Supports Strategies
Checklists and rubrics help students develop their abilities to self-assess and revise their writing.
Setting overall goals, as well as smaller goals as steps to reaching them, encourages consistent, achievable progress and helps students feel confident in their skills and abilities.
Journaling allows students to reflect on their thinking and feelings, process their learning, and connect new information to what they know.
When students reframe negative thoughts and tell themselves kind self-statements, they practice positive self-talk.
Providing space and time for students to reflect is critical for moving what they have learned into Long-term Memory.
When students engage in a dialogue with themselves, they are able to orient, organize, and focus their thinking.
