metacognition your superpower

Metacognition: awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking processes (Merriam-webster)

Teaching children how they learn best will give them a superpower that they can access and utilise for the rest of their lives.

Many moons ago, when I was at school, I had no notion of learning preferences and found it so difficult to learn material for tests and exams.  For each subject during my A-Levels, I learnt 4 essays verbatim by writing them over and over in the hope that one of the titles would come up or I could mould my essay to a different title.  This gave me enough ammunition to pass but would never allow me to shine.  If I had known then that I have a visual learning preference and can learn best with images, graphs and colours, I would have been able to digest and regurgitate material in a much more productive way.

Studying to teach children with learning differences gave me the opportunity to assess my own learning style, which in turn has become a real asset when learning new material or presenting information; it has even made reading more pleasurable.

Turn your attention to your own learning style and then teach your children and others around you to do the same.  By teaching children how they learn best, we are empowering them for life.

There are different ways to unlock your learning preference.  Try taking this short quiz to firstly uncover if you are more right or left brained.  Next, complete a more extensive set of questions to learn about the different learning styles: auditory, visual and kinesthetic.  

Which learning preference do you identify with?  Maybe you feel connected to two!