Developing children’s cognitive strategies for learner autonomy

The notion of learner autonomy has never been such a hot topic as in today’s world of rapid change and development, where everybody needs to keep up, or find themselves left behind technologically, socially and professionally. In order to give our primary learners the best chances they can have in their future lives in such a world, it is essential to foster lifelong learning and creativity, which in turn will support them in their individual journey into and through adulthood. Ritchhart, Church and Morrison (2011) remind us that learning is a product of thinking. We can help children to think by providing them with the right tools.

Thinking skills and strategies

Let’s look first at what we mean by cognitive strategies and think about why we might want to focus on working with these in our English language classroom. I’ll then outline some practical ideas for helping children develop cognitive strategies through language learning.

In cognitive psychology, a strategy implies a technique, method or procedure that someone might employ consciously to perform a (mental) task effectively. ?Cognitive strategy is a term which appears in the Cambridge TKT: Young Learners Module syllabus, where it implies ‘the mental skills children use in order to process and understand the content or the language they are learning’ (Gregson, 2024, p.25). In fact, the TKT: YL syllabus provides some helpful and clear examples of cognitive strategies (TKT: Young Learners Module Handbook for Teachers, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, 2022, p.11):

We can see from this list that these strategies named by TKT are closely tied to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive goals (Krathwohl, 2002), which move from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to the more complex Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Although the sequential nature of this hierarchical taxonomy may be somewhat problematic, it can serve as a helpful framework of mental operations at different levels of complexity. Some may feel that children, especially at the lower primary level, are incapable of the thinking skills at the higher levels, the ‘HOTS’, given their stage of cognitive development. However, most teachers, caregivers or indeed anyone who has spent time with young children would very likely argue that most young children are skilled to a degree in HOTS when taken from the child’s perspective; we can therefore help children improve these thinking skills, to develop cognitively, by introducing and working on relevant, age-appropriate cognitive strategies. For example, we can help a young child put five pencils in order of size by showing them how to compare their length in turn and place them on the table in order accordingly. Then we can support them with the language of comparison to talk about the sequence in English. This could be done using techniques such as demonstration, language models, and so on, which illustrate how to approach the cognitive strategy of sequencing.

In addition, the idea of making connections between and within learning also draws on constructivist learning theory. Biggs and Collis’s SOLO taxonomy, standing for Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (Biggs, n.d.), is a valuable complement – or alternative - to Bloom’s Taxonomy as it allows us to consider complexity in learning. Its five levels move through degrees of complexity of structure and connection of knowledge from single to increasingly complex, rather than presenting a hierarchy. Hook and Roberts (2018) and Main (2021) provide insight into the classroom application of the SOLO taxonomy, which further allows us to focus on developing and assessing children’s cognitive strategies, including useful resources to follow up on.

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Supporting whole child development and learning across the curriculum

Not only do children need to employ cognitive strategies to learn and acquire language more effectively, their use will also support learning in other curriculum areas as they are readily transferable. ‘Critical thinking and Problem Solving’ can be found among the skills categorised in the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework, where ‘Learners identify patterns and relationships, evaluate ideas and use these skills to solve problems’ (Cambridge, 2020, p.3). This is broken down into three components:

-????????? Understanding and analysing ideas and arguments

-????????? Evaluating ideas and arguments

-????????? Solving problems and making decisions

The Framework is a highly valuable resource which helps teachers unpick the needs of learners at different stages of education across the curriculum, including at Primary level, and lets us assume a whole child approach to our practice.

Developing children’s thinking skills through cognitive strategies

In addition to the pedagogical and developmental benefits, incorporating work on cognitive strategies makes learning more meaningful; supporting and challenging children cognitively in language learning will engage them more deeply and as a result they will be more motivated to participate and learn.

Tips for developing learners’ cognitive strategies in our practice

Let’s look at four main areas where we might focus our attention in our practice:

1.????? The teacher

2.????? Classroom planning and practice

3.????? Materials and resources

4.????? The learner

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1. The teacher

There are many simple ways in which a teacher can actively support learners in developing cognitive strategies as they interact with them in the classroom:

Using questions: We can vary our question types, and ensure we ask plenty of open, divergent and wh- questions to extend and probe thinking and encourage children to explore their own and others’ ideas, all the while using closed questions where needed.

We should also ensure we provide plenty of wait time to elicit longer, more thoughtful responses. Tailoring our questions and wait time to different learners in our classes based on their individual needs will help us support and challenge each of them.

Teacher language: We should always be mindful about our use of language, taking care to grade it so that all our learners can access our meaning. Using clear, supported, repetitive instructions can also help reduce the cognitive load and ensure we communicate a task or message effectively. Nonetheless, we can add some variety to our language using synonyms, or include additional information or questions followed up by asking students why we might have chosen a specific word, asked a particular question or how English compares with their own language. Careful use of the learner’s own language and various translanguaging techniques can model communication strategies, while reflection on these could prompt valuable cognitive strategies, such as comparing, matching, predicting or evaluating.

Feedback: There is a clear need for constructive, forward-pointing feedback which forges a clear path to drive learning forwards. The teacher is in prime position to model such feedback and learners can be supported in developing skills for evaluating and formulating feedback on their own and others’ language, learning and skills, which incorporates several HOTS and requires critical, joined-up thinking.

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2. Classroom planning and practice

In the classroom, there are numerous ways to focus on cognitive strategies, and these may be planned or unplanned.

Classroom routines: Routines are valuable in younger as well as older primary classrooms for promoting well-being by providing a safe, predictable learning environment and frameworks for repetitive and creative use of language simultaneously. Once the term or year gets well underway, it’s time to spice them up a little. Here are some ways we could do that:

• Employ thinking routines, “a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking” (Project Zero, 2022), ‘simple strategies for scaffolding thinking that were designed to be woven into a teacher’s ongoing classroom practice (Ritchhart, Church and Morrison, 2011, p.xvii). Through their ‘routine’ nature, they serve as training in particular cognitive strategies which are easily tailored to the age and context of your learners. They are transferable across the curriculum and even outside the classroom, which makes them highly valuable for autonomous learners. Some examples can be found online directly from the Project Zero website?or from other sources, such as Thinking Pathways.
• Add a little challenge to your regular language activities and routines. This could be as simple as a change in topic or a new verse to a song, or perhaps interrupt a familiar Q&A routine and ask: ‘Why do you say/think xxx?’.

Working with text: When reading or telling stories, singing together or doing text-based activities, we can engage children more cognitively by using questions and prompts for more, deeper thinking such as:

• predicting (‘Look at the front cover of the book. Who do you think is the main character of the story? Why?’)
• inferring (‘How does he feel? How do you know?’)
• hypothesising (‘If the tiger hadn’t run away, what might have happened in the end?’).

These may equally be tasks such as drawing or editing a picture, making a model, writing or performing a story.

When developing sets of questions or tasks based around a text, ask ‘good’ questions which stimulate thinking and avoid closed or comprehension check type questions, where possible. These might mirror the teacher questions mentioned above.

Classroom activities: By considering the cognitive strategies involved in classroom tasks and activities, we can ensure that our learners are actively practising these. To this end, we should provide meaningful, student-centred ‘thinking’ language practice through activities, avoiding rote, repetitive exercises, even as homework, where possible.

We might, for example, engage children in inquiry and project work, which could ?involve investigating, experimenting, or designing something. When using games and game-like activities and tasks, we can choose those which require children to use age-appropriate cognitive strategies as well as language and communication strategies, making the objectives of the activity about both language and thinking.

3. Materials and resources

While a coursebook is a valuable asset, we can supplement and adapt this material to boost its support and practice of cognitive strategies development, if necessary. This can be done through the use of materials and resources to stimulate thinking, such as:

• Authentic materials which children encounter in their everyday lives. Learners might, for example, think about how they are used in the real-world context; find similarities and differences between those in different languages or cultures; or give their opinions or preferences about aspects of the materials.
• Realia, including toys and models. These could serve different purposes in our classrooms, and where they are ambiguous or used in an unexpected way, they can stimulate thinking and prompt learner questions.
• Natural materials. Bringing the natural world into the classroom supports children’s naturalistic intelligence and boosts ecological awareness. Natural materials can be sought, used, repurposed or used as stimuli by children in creative ways or explored for their natural features and beauty.

Images. Unusual or left-field photos and other images can raise questions or cause learners to stop to think. Even when teaching simple vocabulary using an image, this image could be slightly unusual or surprising, which can encourage divergent thinking and questions from children. Compare these possible images for use with younger primary children to present or review the word cat:

Teacher: What is it?

Learner: It’s a cat.

Teacher: What can you see?

Learners: A cat! // A tail! // A bottom!

Teacher: So, what do you think? It’s a…

Learners: Cat! It’s a cat.

Teacher: Yes, I think so too. And what do you think the cat’s doing under there?

Online AI tools are also very useful for generating unusual images which can also stimulate thinking through cognitive strategies such as hypothesising, deducing meaning from context and so on.

4. The learner

Last, but absolutely not least, the learners themselves. Holding the child as the active participant in the learning process, the one doing the thinking, it seems logical that we should overtly encourage and scaffold them in developing strategies to support their thinking and, therefore, be more effective and autonomous learners.

There are numerous ways we might approach this, for example:

• In work with peers, we can help children ask each other and expect good, thinking questions, such as those above, having them brainstorm questions beforehand, then ticking them off as they use them.
• Making the use of cognitive strategies explicit through thinking routines as mentioned above, can help learners understand how they contribute to cognitive skills development and recognise their transferability. An age-appropriate level of metacognitive awareness can only serve to support children’s thinking skills development.
• Finally, by engaging children in self-assessment as a cognitive strategy, we can give them a deeper understanding of the learning process and help them develop the skills of goal-setting, reflection and self-monitoring. The SOLE taxonomy can also be useful here.

We can see that there is a multitude of ways in which we can support children with cognitive strategies to develop thinking skills. It is for the teacher, then, to employ their own thinking skills in order to put in place adequate conditions for our learners to have the opportunity to learn to use and reflect on cognitive strategies. Through this, their self-awareness and understanding of their own development can fast-track learner autonomy and benefit their cognitive development.

The TKT Course Young Learners Module?by Kate Gregson is available now.

References:

Biggs, J. (no date). SOLO Taxonomy. Retrieved from:? https://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/solo-taxonomy/

Cambridge (2011) TKT: Young Learners Module Handbook for Teachers. Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

Cambridge (2020). Cambridge Life Competencies Framework: Critical Thinking. [pdf] Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Retrieved from: https://languageresearch.cambridge.org/images/Language_Research/CamFLiC/CLCF_Critical_Thinking.pdf

Gregson, K. (2024). The TKT Course: Young Learners Module. Cambridge University Press and Assessment.

Hook, P., & Roberts, J. (2018). The who, what, when, where, and why of SOLO taxonomy.?Set: Research Information for Teachers, (2), 48.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 2012-2018.

Main, P (2021, May 24). A teacher's guide to SOLO Taxonomy. Retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/what-is-solo-taxonomy

Project Zero (2022). Project Zero’s thinking routines toolbox. Retrieved from: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

Ritchhart, R., Church, M. & Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible. Jossey-Bass.