How does adolescent brain development impact metacognition and self-regulation?
~The adolescents brains are going through a rapid growth period at this time. Most importantly to remember is that they are NOT fully developed. Particularly the frontal lobes that regulate emotional control and reasoning skills. While they may comprehend the content of the subject you are teaching, they have not yet fully developed the ability to connect its importance in their lives as it pertains outside of the classroom and therefore their final grade. This can (and often does) lead to poor study habits that will allow them to pass their exams but not actually absorb the content for recall after the class is completed.
How will you help your students develop the three types of metacognitive knowledge (declarative, procedural, and self-regulatory) and the three metacognitive skills (planning, monitoring and evaluating)?
~Group presentations utilizing the target language are a fantastic way of both helping students develop these skills and also evaluating their knowledge of the content area. I will have my students get into groups of 4 or 5 (or more depending on class size) and each group will be responsible for creating and presenting a lesson on any one thing they want to learn more about or are particularly interested in about American Sign Language. Topic examples are: How Alexander Graham Bell impacted the Deaf Community, Technology advances relating to the Deaf, Medical advances and controversy of their use in the Deaf World, Art DeVia, etc etc. These will be comprehensive presentations including signed lecture, visual aids, hand outs and a quiz written by the group to give to the rest of the class.
These presentations will have benchmark deadlines for different areas throughout the semester to make sure they are on task and aren't procrastinating the entire assignment until the week before their given presentation date. Rubrics will be given in advance so they know what is expected of them and how they can earn the grade they want to get out of the class. I will also incorporate backward design in their presentations by having them design their assessments (quizzes) toward the beginning of the task so they will be able to use it as a benchmark to evaluate their progress.
