Self-monitoring refers to our ability to track what we are doing and how or why we are doing it. We self-monitor (or at least we should) in every setting and activity. From how we read and write, to how we engage with friends and family, self-monitoring will greatly improve our academic performance, social interactions, and daily life. The more aware we are of what we are doing and why we are doing it, the better we are able to perform any given task. And while self-monitoring is important for all of us, it is especially essential for students. The earlier they can learn to self-monitor, the better.
Strategies for Teaching Students how to Self-Monitor
Build metacognition.
The first step in improving a student’s self-monitoring skills is to improve their awareness of their own strengths and challenges, which is to say their metacognition. Otherwise, kids won’t be able to plan for challenges, identify successes, and learn from mistakes. One way to help students get to know themselves is by giving them a metacognitive survey. Surveys like this one can help them become aware of their strengths, values, learning styles, and study habits. As a result, they’ll be able to self-evaluate more effectively.
Create Checklists.
A simple but impactful strategy to help students learn to self-monitor is to create checklists with their most common mistakes. This will not only help students learn to identify the errors they make most frequently, it will also help them actively check their work to avoid those same mistakes. This strategy can be applied to a series of math problems, a piece of writing, a recording of them reading a text – you name it! The key is to reinforce that mistakes are just information for learning, but students must learn from them so they don’t make the same ones again.
Question often.
As students are working, they should periodically stop and ask themselves what they are doing and how or why they are doing it. Questions like “does that sentence look right?” or “did I show my work in a way that makes sense?” can help students self-evaluate and learn from experience. The best way to get students comfortable with asking themselves these questions is for them to see it modeled often and in different contexts.
Identify their purpose.
As students are going through their day, they should stop and reflect on their purpose. Why am I reading this book? What is this emotional reaction helping me accomplish? Am I communicating what I want to get across in this paragraph? Once they have identified their purpose in any given task, they can evaluate whether they are on the right course.
Stop, Review, Reflect.
A big part of self-monitoring is self-evaluation. As important as it is, many students are resistant to checking their work. But self-evaluation is about much more than double-checking answers. It’s about reflecting on not just the end-result, but the process, and how the student felt in that process. It’s about identifying gaps in skills, strategies, or knowledge that may have caused any errors or frustrations, and coming up with a plan for how to do better next time. Once again, there is nothing wrong with making mistakes; they are a part of the learning process. Identifying those mistakes through self-monitoring and learning from those experiences is the key to growth and improvement!
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