What we've learned about Digital Portfolios

Last year we moved our Fine Arts courses away from traditional report cards and onto digital portfolios as the primary form of assessment.

Moving 600 kids onto portfolio based-assessment was a massive undertaking for our Fine Arts teams, and they did a commendable job of embracing the possibilities of these digital tools.

The Fine Arts team, with the support of our administration, was given time throughout the year to wrestle with the move to digital portfolios, including the creation of one unified rubric.

This video captures the story of our first year of the project. We're so excited about the learning from the first year, and have already started our second year of the initiative with new ideas and enthusiasm.

If you have any questions or feedback about our move to portfolio-based assessment, please comment below.

Podcasting Mathematical Understanding

Last year our grade 8 math teachers held a math fair with their students, supported by the Galileo Educational Network. Students were introduced to a number of classic mathematical problems and brainteasers, and were allowed to choose what medium would best represent their solutions.

The Galileo site has a number of resources on math fairs, including lists of problems, and three different rubrics (here, here and here).

This student-created video solution was a response to the Babushka Squares problem. This video is exceptional in it's clarity and depth. The student skillfully uses the medium of video (made on iMovie) to demonstrate how powerful student voice can be in demonstrating understanding in core curriculum areas:

A Deeper Focus on Teacher Collaboration

The 2010/2011 school year means the introduction of a number of new initiatives at the Calgary Science School. It is our plan to share these new programs in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

Inquiry-based Learning is what we do

Teacher Collaboration how we do it

The first of these new initiatives involves a greater focus on teacher collaboration as the foundation of our school's professional development and teacher growth plan.

Historically at the Science School we have allotted agreat deal of time and resources toward opportunities for our teachers to meet and plan together. Time and time again we have observed how protected and collaborative planning time is foundational to the design of strong inquiry-based work. Teachers need time to brainstorm ideas and create learning experiences that are engaging and build deep understanding of core concepts.

What is Inquiry-based Learning? A Student Perspective

Last June at the end of the school year, the grade 8 students at the Calgary Science School were invited to re-imagine what schools might look like, now and in the future. In groups, students chose educational topics to examine such as assessment, physical space, and the relationships within a school, all designed to give students a voice in how education might be re-imagined.

One group of students used this opportunity to examine the type of teaching and learning at our own school. They wanted to analyze our school-wide focus on inquiry-based learning and so they created and distributed a survey for students and staff. One of the interesting findings that these three grade 8 boys uncovered was that within our school community we have a wide range of definitions and understanding of what inquiry-based learning is.

With that in mind, the boys decided to help bring some clarity to this complex issue. They created a video and a poster of strong examples of inquiry-based projects and have presented their findings to our staff and board of directors.

With that in mind, here's their grade 8 perspective on Inquiry-Based Learning:

Creating Clay Dragons

As the end of the year draws near, our students are completing many diverse and engaging projects. One of these is a grade 7 art project where students created clay dragons, using a number of foundational skills they had acquired.

In this video, art teacher Lorrie Emin explains the details of the project:

Visit from the Dean of Education

On Thursday, June 10th the Calgary Science School hosted a number of special guests to our school. Dr. Dennis Sumara, the recently appointed Dean of Education from the University of Calgary, and Dr. Sharon Friesen, Associate Dean, were invited to CSS to experience the culture of our school first-hand. Also participating in the school visit were Dr. Garry Andrews, (Executive Director of the Alberta Charter Schools Association) Dr. Robert St. Onge, (Director at Alberta Learning), Dr. Bonnie Shapiro (Professor of Science Education) and Joanne Steinmann, (Alberta Initiative for School Improvement, University of Calgary) as well as members of the CSS Board of Directors and leadership team.

The purpose of the visit was to initiate discussion in support of a closer partnership between the Calgary Science School and Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary. Over the 10 years of the school, we have established a significant number of connections with the University through hosting student teachers (CSS teachers hosts anywhere from 8-12 student teachers a year) and participating in research studies (this year there are 7 academic research studies being conducted at CSS). However, while these connections are already in place and CSS is well known by the Faculty of Education, the intention of this visit was to explore the possibilities of an even closer relation where CSS would become a partner or lab school for the Faculty.

The visit was started with two groups of grade 8 students sharing their most recent inquiry-project around redesigning schools for the 21st Century. Both sets of students did a fantastic job of sharing their learning, and represented the school in a professional way. The Dean commented a number of times on the quality and depth of the student presentations. The rest of the visit centered around sharing snapshots of our school’s history, vision and examples of classroom projects and student learning.

Overall, the visit was very well received. In fact, the Dean subsequently wrote an opinion piece for the Calgary Herald in response to a recent Alberta Education Report entitled “Inspiring Education.” In writing this response, the Dean made specific mention of the strength of learning that occurs at the Calgary Science School, and highlighted the clear connection between our school’s vision and the direction of teaching and learning in the province.

In terms of the potential partnership with the University, we should know more details in the Fall.

Learning to Draw the Human Shape

Our grade 6 students have just wrapped up the tracing project that they've been working on through the last semester. As written about before, this is a project designed to have students learn to draw what they see, not what they think they see!

After doing the tracing through the glass, students transfer their drawings to water color paper, and then design and complete the full painting with background.

Virtual Machines: Final Projects

Over the last few weeks, our grade 8 students have been working on virtual Rube Goldberg Machines, using a physics simulator called Phun.

The planning documents and rubric for the project can be found here.

For the assessment of the work, the teachers really wanted to focus on the students' understanding of the various simple machines they were expected to build into their complex machine. With that in mind, the students were asked to create voice-over narrations of their machines - being asked to explain how the different machines combined and transferred the energy through the system.

One of the advantages of creating these machines with digital rather than real world tools, is that students are immediately working with the scientific concepts at the heart of the project. Within minutes of opening the program, students were testing, modifying, tinkering and working with their machines. While there is something important about having students build physical models, the disadvantage is that students are limited to whatever objects that can locate, and often spend more time on the building than on the scientific understanding. However, by designing the work in Phun students are able to play with a much wider range of gear ratios and different materials than they would have been able to had they been building a real life machine.

Having looked at a large number of these student projects, what is interesting is the range of creative solutions that the students built into their machines. Phun allows student to experiment with a number of materials including rubber, helium, glass, stone and water. While the core of the project revolved around students demonstrating their understanding of 6 simple machines, they were offered limitless creativity in how they would combine the tools and the task their simple machine would perform.

The program Phun was a free download - but due to the complexity of the machines our students designed, the program quickly became laggy. Many of the student machine bogged down and were very difficult to complete. However, both the students and teachers demonstrated an incredible amount of perseverance in completing the designs. The teachers are very committed to continuing this project next year - and we're looking at purchasing Algodoo for next year - the paid version of this program.

Throughout the project, and despite the laggyness of the program, students demonstrated a strong engagement in the work. Many students went home and immediately invested a great deal of time in learning and experimenting with the program. Students repeated asked to work on the machines - we are really excited about the potential classroom uses moving forward.

One student in particular was interviewed about the project - and mentioned that he wanted to continue worked on his design. He also commented that this was one of the only projects in school that has ever inspired him to continue working on it way past the due date.

What a strong recommendation for the project!

To complete the project, each student created two videos: (1) their final machine with a sound track, and (2) their final video with a voice-over narration explaining their scientific understanding.

Below are four videos, there are two students examples (with each of the two videos).

Student #1 with Music

Student Video #1 With Narration

Student Video #2 With Music

Student Video #2 With Narration

Creating Virtual Machines

Our grade 8 Science students are just starting on a project building digital Goldberg machines. To accomplish this, the students will be using an application called Phun, which is a free, 2D physics simulator.

Phun allows students to digitally build and combine a variety of objects including gears, wheels, springs, etc and to control different variable including gravity, wind speed, density of objects, etc.

By using Phun, we are asking the students will be able to create something like this in order to demonstrate their understanding of simple machines.

Here is the initial planning document for the unit, including a rubric and the desired student outcomes.

Cross Border Skyping - Part 1 of Many?

Yesterday two of our grade 9 Humanities classes had the opportunity to have a discussion with two classes of grade 8 students at Wayne Highland Middle School in Honesdale, PA. Using Skype, the students were able to ask other questions about the differences between the political systems in our two countries.

Student on both ends enjoyed the discussion, as the topics ranged from political process, to troops in Afghanistan, to healthcare reforms and Olympic Hockey.

Our thanks to the teachers involved, as well as Lori Sheldon for helping set up the opportunity through twitter.

One of the most significant things that came out of this discussion was a desire next year to build a more sustained project around cross-border political understanding. While this initial experiment with having American and Canadian students talk politics was engaging, we believe there is incredible potential in having students work together over a more lengthly period. We imagine students working in small groups to compare and contrast how our two countries respond to particular issues (economy, healthcare, environment, immigration, etc). This would also allow our students to dig deeply into the different histories and values that have created the current political and economic conditions in both countries.

We were also thinking it would be fascinating to have students co-build a presentation (perhaps using Google Docs) and then share them to their two classes simultaneously. This would allow students to build some great collaboration and communication skills with students they have never met face-to-face.

So our hunt is on for a school willing to try this next year. We are flexible with the time in the year we would attempt this project.

We're looking for:

• four classes of grade 9 or 10 students who study political systems
• a teacher willing to build an extended project through skype with our two grade 9 teachers
• a school were students have enough access to technology to be engaged in continuous collaboration
• a flexible time-table to allow for synchronous presentations

If are such a teacher, or know of such a teacher, please comment below. It's never too early to start planning for next year!

Libraries Can Be Open to All

This post is written by our Teacher/Librarian Donna Alden, in response to an article titled "The Unhappy Place: What libraries can do to welcome kids who struggle with print" written by Ira Socol and published at School Library Journal.

Well Ira, I am glad to hear you persevered, despite the unfriendly and foreboding presence the libraries of your childhood presented!

To provide some context: I am a qualified teacher-librarian working in a dynamic middle school in Alberta, Canada, and I’d like to respond to your article in School Library Journal called “The Unhappy Place…Libraries …Welcoming Kids Who Struggle with Print”. I have an Education Degree, and a Master’s Degree in Library & Information Studies, 15 years experience as a teacher-librarian, and before that, 10+ years teaching experience in our province. My experiences with libraries began when I insisted on catching a city bus by myself, and marched into a public library, intent on filling my arms with as many books as the rules would allow.

I completely agree with what you have said about making libraries more accessible to everyone, including those not geared towards text-dense books. I believe you’ll find many libraries already reflect what you have so passionately and clearly expressed in your article. In fact, I just attended a conference here in Calgary, and a full-day session on school libraries of the future, presented by two leading experts in this field- Dr. David Loertcher (USA) and Canadian, Dr. Carol Koechlin. “Googling” their names along with the refining term: “school libraries” will offer you a wealth of information, and I trust, much reassurance. I’m not sure books were even mentioned during the whole day’s work, nor was the word “rules”!

First, I would like to comment upon your generalization that all librarians love books, that libraries are book focused, and that (it seems to me) you believe most libraries still present unwelcoming barriers.

For over thirty years public and school libraries have been making changes in order be more accessible to all people. These libraries have a mandate to provide access and information to their clientele, unlike in the old days, when libraries seemed to be mostly focused on being the “keeper of books”- period.

Although libraries may still seem print and book oriented, there are many alternative forms of print (including your suggestions in technology options), books that present more information graphically than through text, offer choices in items that are not books at all, feature numerous programs in support of literacy initiatives, allow eating and drinking, encourage chatting areas with comfy seating arrangements, and have welcoming decors. I’ll concede not all libraries reflect all of everything cited as examples here and in your blog. Perfection is not easily attainable.

What is important is that the ideal, the goal, the mission and vision, of school and public libraries is in agreement with your message. You’ll not see all changes in all libraries, and the reasons for this, I suggest, are numerous, common, and multifaceted. Funding is, and will continue to be, a challenge for change for some libraries. The qualifications of personnel in libraries across our two countries are inconsistent. In smaller libraries, many people who loom behind that big desk you mention, make rules, and decide on procedures and policies, are probably not qualified- to put it bluntly- and thus are not informed. Or, perhaps they’re hanging on to their positions for dear life, with blinders on, and have ignored all the changes encouraged and supported in the field of public and school libraries in North America, and other areas of the world as well!

The picture you present of your-self as a youngster is a recognizable picture of the typical boy. This is a generalization- but a valid one. There is a mountain of evidence in the field of education that backs the notion that boys (and many girls) learn differently than how schools are traditionally set up for- a text-dense, sit still world of books and routines- the proverbial square pegs in round holes image comes to mind- but we’ve made great strides in differentiating instruction in literacy, and offering all the kinds of alternatives to word-heavy books you and many others struggle to find meaning within.

What you say supports what is being done in many schools and libraries everywhere- working from where the child is, presenting alternative forms of information, recognizing non-text information as legitimate and effective means of information and communication, etc. That little boy comes into our school library and knows exactly where to find the magazines, the Dewey section where comics are located, the jokes section, where books like Guinness Book of World Records and The Dangerous Book for Boys (and …Girls) are shelved (again, by the cursed Dewey system!), the shelf of graphic novels, and books on card tricks, optical illusions and books that show how things work.

And you did too- you loved books, just not the word-dense ones, and knew how to find them.

We don’t allow food or beverages- reasonable because we don’t want them to have to handle the “worse case scenario”- spills and spoiled pages, computers, etc. However, I know the public library here does indeed allow food and beverages, and they budget for accidents.

Our school library has no problem with hats, i-pods, or whatever else libraries in the past may have prohibited. Our library doesn’t have rules- rather, we have guidelines and suggestions, to empower students to take responsibility, respect others’ needs to access, and consider the library one of their areas of security and discovery in our school. We have flexible scheduling for teachers all day, and are open to students before and after school, as well as at recess times.

Although our school library is, first and foremost, an instructional space, we have areas to chat and relax, play hand-held video games, share magazines, or whatever, and there is only one area where the “cone of silence” reigns- an area for those who need quiet to read, or think, or study. Our library is a good place to be, I think.

I’m a librarian, and I do happen to love books. As a professional, however, what I love and am passionate about more than books, are children, teaching & learning, and information literacy. The focus of my professional position, and the mission of our library, is one of access and information- not books! And, I know I’m not one of the few- I’m one of the many. We’re making headway towards the vision you present, Ira.

But, like all institutions, fields in social services, and society- it takes time, vision, energy, passion, and, I believe, sound information backed by research. We’re achieving that, and more- I encourage you to look for the evidence. And in the libraries you see little or none of this- continue to shout out your message…. There’s much work to do, and many of us in the fields of education and libraries completely agree with you.

Grade 4: Endangered Animals and their Habitats

One of our grade 4 teachers, Greg Neil, is presenting next week at the GEOEC conference in Canmore Alberta.

Greg's presentation is going to focus on the Galileo Inquiry Rubric, and then use a Grade 4 project he designed on endangered animals as a case study of inquiry in action.

The purpose of the project was to have students understand the different regions in Alberta, and to explore the understanding of "land" by attempting to take on the perspective of an endangered animal with one of the regions.

Inquiry, Assessment and Technology in Phys Ed

One of our Physical Educadtion teachers (Tammy Berry) is delivering a presentation this weekend at the Annual Conference for the Health and Physical Education Council of Alberta.

Tammy is delivering a one-hour session on her grade 4-6 football unit, in which she strives to incorporate both inquiry-based learning and technology.

In the past, when Tammy taught this unit, she was often frustrated because playing traditional games of football with this age group (grades 4-6) often left out a sizable chunk of students, due to either athletic ability or interest in the sport. Tammy was looking for a way to teach the foundational skills of football in a way that would invite participation from all students, as well as allow for creativity and technology.

The unit she designed is built around 'football routines.' Over the course of a few weeks, students are introduced to a number of foundational skills (throwing a spiral, kicking, catching, running plays, etc) and are asked to build a one-minute routine that incorporates all the skills. Tammy introduces a rubric of the skills at the beginning of the unit, and throughout, students have the opportunity to self-assess their own skills, as well as performing their routines for their peers to receive feedback on how to improve the skills and routine.

Throughout the unit, Tammy finds that all students are now fully engaged in the sport. Students have the opportunity to build the skills in an environment that is both safe and creative for all students. As students are building and practice the routines, they are constantly receiving advice from teacher and peers.

At the end of the unit, after receiving feedback and improving their ideas, students perform and record their final routines. Students then upload their final routine to their digital portfolios, and are asked to self-assess their improvement over the course of the unit. Students can capture this self-assessment either in written form, or by creating a voice-over on top of their video file.

In this way, Tammy is attempting to bring technology into the P.E. class by mirroring the use of video recording in professional sports. Students are able to watch themselves performing the skills, and can point out areas for improvement. Through the entire unit, the self-identification and improvement of skills is the goal.

Here's one of the grade 6 student written self-reflections:

This year I learned a lot of things in football. What I learned was some techniques like run moves when my teammates yelled hut. In this video I did the buttonhook . I have improved on my punting the ball. I can punt the footballs farther and more accurate and can sort of get a spiral on it, but in this video the punt at the end did not have a spiral. I was a good teammate because I gave out suggestions for what to do in this video and told the rest on my teammates what they could improve on. My favourite part of the football was making a routine with a group and watching my video. I know that next year I need to improve on remembering to throw with my left foot forward.

Below are some of the materials used by Tammy during her presentation:

This is the presentation given by Tammy:

Inquiry and Technology in Physical Education

View more presentations from Calgary Science School.

This is the video of students working on their routines. You can see the involvement by all students in the class:

This is the video of one group performing their routine to receive feedback from their peers:

This is one of the final videos, with student voice-over:

Finally, here is Tammy's football unit plan, complete with the rubric for the football routines:

Grade 5: Science in the Wetlands

One of the luxuries we have at the Science School is being within walking distance of a protected wetlands area called the Weaselhead Natural Environment Park. Being so close allows our teachers and students to make us of the park for recreation, as well as scientific and environmental education.

One of our grade 5 teachers has planned a project for his students to study the quality of water in various places around the Weaselhead.

"Examining Student Work" - Part II

As written before, a significant chunk of our PD this year revolves around an "examining student work" framework.

In previous years, we have focused much of our professional energies around what teachers do in the classroom (how we plan, build projects, use technology, etc). However, this year we wanted to look at the work actually being produced by students and examine it for deep understanding of core concepts. While the two are intimately connected (teaching and learning) we believe that the most useful data to inform practice comes from carefully examining the work our students produce.

About a month ago, teachers worked through Part 1 of the framework which involved facilitated discussions with partner teachers. Overall, the discussions were very rich, and a number of common themes emerged from teachers:

• Assessment – our teachers saw a need for greater integration of feedback loops and checkpoints throughout a project. This included a need for more clear learning outcomes, stronger alignment between learning outcomes and assessment rubrics, and more chunking of projects into smaller, more assessable elements

• Exemplars – teachers are wondering hjow best to align CSS student work with provincial/grade level standards. How do we know if our students learning lines up with students in the rest of the province?

• Direct teaching versus student-driven research – narrowing the focus of large, complex studies so that students don't become overwhelmed with the amount of data available on a topic. How do we manage the tensions between "teacher-centered" and "student-centered" projects?

• Content knowledge building versus Performance/Presentation of knowledge – teachers are wondering how to limit the amount of time on presenting knowledge (iMovies, podcasts, etc) versus the development of core, subject-based understanding. While the ability to communicate clearly with a variety of multi-media tools is important for our students, we don't want to over-emphasize this at the loss of core understanding. Teachers are also wondering about the development of a scope and sequence of technology skills across grade levels.

This week we had Part II of the discussions. The goal of this second part is to share the outcomes of the first discussions across grades using "vertical sharing teams." We have arranged groups of teachers from grades 4-9 in one group, and they have a half day release time to work through short sharing sessions.

There are a few goals for these sharing sessions:

1) to celebrate projects across grade levels
2) to share reflections from part I
3) to get feedback, suggestions and support on how teachers can move practice forward
4) to look for common themes across grades

Our first sessions with teachers will be starting this afternoon. We're looking forward to the outcomes!

Below is the documentation created for both Part I and Part II:

The Benefits of an Arts Education

How Do We Know When Students Are Benefitting from the Arts?

A Personal Response Supporting Advancing Arts Programs

Dr. Shelley Robinson

After writing the literature review Promising Practices and Core Learnings in Art Education (Alberta Education, 2008) and then reviewing the K-12 Arts Education Curriculum Framework (Alberta Education, June 2009 Draft), I pose the following question: What is our essential goal as educators when offering the arts in public education? And, how do modular programs compare with advancing programs (that require some pre-requisite skills) in achieving this goal?

Guest Speaker at MRU

This morning one of our staff, Neil Stephenson, was a guest speaker during an Education Course at Mount Royal University. Neil was asked to participate in a course on inquiry-based learning, and he Skyped in to respond to questions generated by the university students.

The students had utilized the Inquiry Rubric developed by the Galileo Educational Network as the framework for discussing Inquiry, and then used Neil's Cigar Box Project as a case study. In groups, the students had used the Rubric to assess Neil's project, and then came to today's discussion with questions about the project and designing inquiry-based learning.

Graph the Olympics!

Our grade 7 and 8 teachers recently finished a graphing and statistical analysis unit that was designed around the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The essential questions for this project were:

• Can different graphs change the perception of data?
• Are there data sets that are more appropriate for certain graphs?
• How do we determine the rankings/seedings for countries/athletes?

You can view the planning document here. This contains the outcomes and descriptions of various parts of the project.

The project involved students moving through a number of different graphing assignments:

1) in groups, students were assigned a participating country in the 2010 games. Students began by collecting data on their country's previous Olympic record, and then chose a method to predict the number of medals that country would win this year. Student graphed a variety of methods before making their choice.

2) student choose a particular Canadian Athlete to follow. Using the "medal potential" data from the International Olympic Committee website, students created a number of probability experiments on the likelihood that their athlete would advance to the final round of their heats.

3) after the olympics, students imagined they were reporters for their country. In this role, students had to choose particular data sets that would make their country appear better in comparison to the 2 countries above and below them.

Much of the classroom discussion centred on the different ways to calculate which country "won" the Olympics. Students first looked at how the IOC organized the data and found that it is based on the number gold medals (and in the event of a tie subsequently looked at silver medals, and then bronze medals). Students then reorganized that data according to 2 alternate methods: by point system (that is, assigning a point for each colour of medal with the most points for gold) and by total medal count (that is, the sum of gold, silver, and bronze). Students then chose which method in their opinion was the "fairest" way of representing the top 20 countries.

Because of varying opinions on the matter, students had some rich, engaging discussions on this topic. A few students (about 8%) agreed with the IOC system of using the gold medal count. They argued that having a gold medal equates with winning an event and that should have more gravity than any silver or bronze medal as those types of medals do not mean that a country has won a competition or an event. Approximately 5% of the students believed that the total medal count should be used as it is often used by the media. They also argued that the type of medal athletes earn should not matter as it is a huge accomplishment to win any medal and so it should be celebrated regardless of the medal colour.

For the most part (about 86%), however, students argued that a point system is the fairest way of ranking. Using a point system seemed like a compromise between the previous systems: it does not ignore all the other medals but at the same time puts more emphasis on the gold as it is, students argued, the most important one to win.

Overall, the teachers were very pleased with the both the engagement and understanding demonstrated by students. They felt this project was a strong example of how to build mathematical understanding around authentic, real-world situations. Throughout the two weeks of the project, students were excited about both the classroom work and their ability to apply their understanding to the Winter Games.

This video is a discussion with two of the grade 7 and grade 8 teachers explaining how the project unfolded, and the impact that they saw on student learning:

This video captures some of the classroom discussions as students worked in groups to determine how to best represent their country's performance during the Olympics:

One of our grade 6 teachers also used parts of this project in her math classroom. This video captures an interview with one of the grade 6 students as he explains how he made his medal predictions for Germany:

This PDF contains the handouts used by teachers, and a collection of SMARTboard slides used throughout:

Grade 8: Renaissance Debates

As described in previous posts, here and here, our grade 8's have been working through a study of the Italian Renaissance, examining the conditions that existed, and then making comparisons with life in contemporary Calgary.

In order to help bridge the gap between the Italian Renaissance and contemporary Calgary, we made use of a number of local experts on various topics including arts, religion, science, technology, education and communication.

Making Sense of Inquiry: Metacognition

Dr. Shelley Robinson, Assistant Principal

An important part of inquiry-based learning is helping students to develop the ability to be metacognitive in their approach to learning. By definition, “cognition refers to the process of knowing. Meta, derived from the Greek, means ‘beyond’ or ‘from’. Metacognition, then, refers to knowing how we learn best and consciously controlling our learning…” (Foster, et al., 2002, p. 5).

Quite commonly, the work of teachers, when grappling with these metacognitive considerations in their school planning, often begins when they consider three guiding questions as a starting point to assist in self-understanding: “1. What do I find easy to learn? 2) What do I find difficult to learn? And 3) What conditions help me to learn challenging materials?”

It is important to think of “meta” being attached to other learning domains, such as the meta-affective (emotions); meta-conative (motivations); meta-kinesthetic (body); and meta-spiritual (inspirations).

Meta-questions or conversations could resemble the following (using fine arts as an example):

1. Metacognitive: What fine art strategy have I used? Is it working? If not, what alternate strategies could I use?
2. Meta-affective: What am I feeling most strongly about in this fine art learning experience? How are my feelings impacting my learning?
3. Meta-conative: What motivates me in the arts? What blocks me? How can I motivate myself?
4. Meta-spiritual: Where did the idea come from? What inspires me?
5. Meta-kinesthetic: Am I tired? How am I breathing? How is my present body experience influencing my learning in the arts? (Robinson, 2007)

Some educators incorporate a series of questions in journaling activities to help students reflexively prepare to create, before, during and after the activity. Inquiry-based learning involves considerable reflexivity, and these metacognitive teaching prompts help students to think about their learning.