Ask Yourself As You Go

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Performance & Monitoring in 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Pupils usually discover they did not understand something when the work comes back marked, which is the most expensive possible moment to find out. Monitoring during the task, do I actually understand this, surfaces the gap while there is still time to do something about it.

The question sounds trivial. The habit is not, because self-regulation has to be taught, modelled and practised rather than picked up from being told to reflect.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

Before an extended task, a teacher plants two checkpoints in it. At each one, pupils stop and answer in the margin: am I sure about what I have just done, or am I guessing? A pupil who writes guessing at checkpoint one has saved twenty minutes of confidently wrong work.

Try it

A way to begin

Plant one checkpoint in one task this week, with the question written where pupils will hit it. Asking them to answer it in writing, even one word, stops the check being skipped.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• Pupils who answer yes and are wrong. A novice's sense of understanding is unreliable, which is why this pairs with an external check rather than replacing one.
• Whether anyone changes course after a checkpoint. Monitoring that never alters behaviour is not yet doing its job.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• There must be something to monitor. Metacognition works on knowledge, never instead of it, so the content has to be taught before the checking of it can mean anything.
• The prompts are scaffolding, and scaffolding is for fading. The long term aim is pupils who ask the question without the checkpoint.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• 👀 Check, Don't Just Feel Winne: a novice's sense of understanding is unreliable. Pair every self-check with an external test, a quiz or worked answer, so monitoring rests on evidence rather than confidence. 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation · Performance & Monitoring
• ⏰ Build in Stop Points Winne: monitoring fades without prompts. Insert planned pauses where students ask whether the approach is still working, before sunk effort makes a wrong method hard to abandon. 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation · Performance & Monitoring
• 🔬 Teach the Illusion of Knowing Show students their own illusion of knowing. Ask them to rate confidence before revealing the answer. When they were certain and wrong, that is the precise moment to intervene. 01 Retrieval Practice · Metacognition & Calibration
• 🔄 Turn Reflection Into a Plan Butler: feedback only regulates learning if it changes the next action. Have students convert each reflection into one concrete adjustment they will make on the very next task. 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation · Self-Reflection & Evaluation

Inclusive practice

The lens this connects with

Through the inclusive practice lens, this is one of the approaches that may reduce barriers around:

• Independence and self regulation

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Flavell gave us the language of metacognition; Winne showed why the monitoring has to happen while the work is happening, not just after it is finished. The card’s attribution stands as published: Flavell.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Metacognition & Self-Regulation.