Successful learners use metacognition to facilitate their problem solving. This is one of the key findings of the National Academy of Sciences’ synthesis of decades of research on the science of learning explained in How People Learn: Mind, Brain, Experience and School Below we explain metacognition and provide the vocabulary to teach it. In part two of this series we will focus on strategy selection. If you’d like to try our full metacognition approach, please contact us here. Start with Cognition Cognition is how you learn. Depending on the topic, the context, personal experiences and genetics, each of us relies on different proportions of cognitive skills to understand and remember what we read, see or hear. We begin learning the moment we are born and we never stop…. Read More

By Mindprint Staff If you work with children or have children, you are probably aware of Carol Dweck‘s seminal work on the importance of growth mindset. In a nutshell, it’s a belief that your capabilities are not something you are simply born with but which you can develop with effort and commitment. Adults can have a big impact by focusing on a child’s effort not outcomes, and help kids understand that hard work and practice  – not pure innate talent – will enable them to succeed. Unfortunately, as can often happen when solid research hits the mainstream media, Dweck’s excellent work has been grossly over-simplified. It’s not as easy as replacing, “Look how smart you are!” with, “I’m so proud of how hard you worked!” and…. Voila, the next Albert Einstein. Or… Read More

  There are a variety of reasons for test anxiety. The best news is that a little bit of test anxiety is good thing. It provides an adrenaline rush to work efficiently. But too much stress produces a full rush of hormones that interferes with the ability to think clearly and rememberwhat you know. If test anxiety is a problem, read on for the seven most common reasons for test anxiety and what to do about it. The very first step is to recognize that the reasons for test anxiety are different for every student. The trick is to figure out which one is the reason for your child’s test anxiety. Subject-Specific Anxiety Sometimes kids develop test anxiety around one subject but not another, similar to how they might have anxiety around… Read More