Developing Metacognitive Skills through Unfinished Questions

Abstract

This research aims to develop 11-12 aged students’ metacognitive skills through Sacks and Levi’s unfinished questions in biology,English, physics lessons.It lasted 5 months.Teachers chose this topic as students had a lot of questions about their work and why they received certain marks, to help students see and analyse their work and ensure the objectivity of assessment the above-mentioned strategy was utilised. Research tools were a survey, pre/post tests. Term results were used as pre/ post tests. There were experimental and control groups to compare the effectiveness of the deployed method. To prepare students to reflect on the lesson effectively, questions like“What mistakes did you make while fulfllling the task? Why?”, “What support do you need to understand the topic better?”, “How would you explain your achievements?”, “What skills were you able to improve during the lesson?”were given. Teachers provided students with some unfinished questions to help them reflect efficiently. Questions were student-oriented rather than lesson-oriented. Questions were related to students’ actions themselves. Survey results revealed that students dislike typical questions, whether they liked the lesson or not, answering with stickers, peer-assessment, whether they achieved the objective. Comparing pre/post-test results for experimental groups showed that, whereas just 4 students had received the highest possible mark on their biology exams prior to the intervention, fourteen individuals had received the highest excellent mark after intervention. 4 students started off with the highest mark, eleven students, more than twice as many, showed excellent results from physics exams.