How about asking students what works well in their learning environment? Self-assessment and reflection is a useful strategy to develop self-regulation skills. It’s also motivating and supports the development of personal goals. This strategy links to Checkpoint 9.3 “Engagement” in the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles.
CAST explains that individuals vary in their metacognitive abilities. While some learners require explicit instruction and modelling of metacognitive thinking, others will show great skill with this.
For some learners, knowing they are achieving independence in their learning is highly motivating. Conversely, a loss of motivation occurs for learners when they cannot see their progress. It is, therefore, important that learners have access to and options for a variety of scaffolds supporting various self-assessment techniques. This provides students with opportunities to identify and select techniques that are favourable for them.
Practical Strategies for Self-Regulation
Recommendations for the types of scaffolds and frameworks to develop self-regulation, as suggested by CAST include, to:
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- Offer devices, aids, or charts to assist individuals in learning to collect, chart and display data. This is taken from their own behaviour for monitoring changes in those behaviours
- Use activities that include a means by which learners get feedback and have access to alternative scaffolds (e.g., charts, templates, feedback displays). These must help students see progress in a way that is understandable and timely
Explicit Strategies
For assessment and development of classroom or learning group culture, co-generative reflections are a great opportunity for insight and student agency. These are also known as cogenerative discussions, cogens or action groups.
This strategy involves a small group of students, representing a diverse mix of the learning group. The students come together to make commendations about what is working well in the learning environment. Additionally, the students make recommendations for improvements.
This simple strategy usually takes place outside of the usual learning time. It promotes ownership and agency, giving students a forum and voice. It is an excellent strategy to develop class culture from the inside out.
From experience and feedback from peers, developing student writing is a challenge across all levels of education. Students noting their progress is an effective method to heighten engagement in writing. Writing record charts, also known as writing graphs, is an effective tool.
To use this strategy, implementing a daily or regular writing routine is important. The teacher provides a writing prompt. Students respond by composing text. They then measure their writing achievement. Individual goals can be set, related to, for example, criteria in a rubric, word count, punctuation use or descriptive language. The students tabulate their results and visually note their achievement in the form of a graph. This strategy is appropriate for whole-class use and allows each student to progress at their own pace. It facilitates simple-to-manage individualised goal-setting. Perseverance is inherent in the process, and identifying progress is highly motivating.
There are more practical, easy-to-implement strategies on reducing barriers to learning on the CUDA website.
