Teaching Metacognition Strategies

By Jillian Conry, PhD & Allison Navas, PhD 

July 2026

In developing The Teaching Metacognition™ Framework, which explores the relationship between higher-order thinking, learner motivation patterns, metacognitive skills, and student engagement, we reflected on the strategies related to each skill area that have been effective for our students and ourselves. We wish we had a strategy menu when we were growing up, rather than relying on trial and error to figure out which strategies tended to help us reach learning goals and succeed in school. 

In working with teachers, we realized that few educator preparation programs guide teachers in how to teach metacognitive skills explicitly, so we suspected that many students struggle nowadays just as we did. The findings from educators all over the world who completed the Teaching Metacognition™ Educator Survey, confirmed our suspicion.

Our natural educator-nerd response was to list, organize, and share the strategies that have proven to be helpful across age groups and content areas in addressing gaps in metacognition and self-regulation. During trainings, educators reported that the strategies resonated with them but stressed that the lack of time makes it difficult to create student-facing materials to incorporate the strategies. In response to teachers’ requests for student-friendly strategies that can be readily shared, we pulled together a few of our favorites here. If you would like deeper explanations on how we use each one, be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter, “The Nerd Party.” 

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This collection is intended to be a starting point rather than a definitive list. As we continue learning alongside educators and students, we will refine, expand, and improve it based on classroom experience, emerging research, and the thoughtful feedback we receive from our community.

Experienced educators continually improve their craft, adding tools to their toolbox and understanding when and how to implement them for their students. Useful strategies that have stood the test of time often go by various names and can be applied in diverse instructional contexts, so some of the strategies listed may already be familiar to you. For any that are new, we encourage you to try them yourself and offer them as options for students who are developing that particular skill.

Our hope is simple: that these strategies help make metacognition more visible, more teachable, and more actionable. When students have a repertoire of strategies to choose from—and teachers have practical ways to introduce them—they are better equipped to navigate challenges, become more self-directed learners, and ultimately realize that successful learning is not about simply knowing the right answers, but about developing the right habits.

Which strategy will you try first? Be sure to let us know in the comments. 

References

Navas, A. G., & Conry, J. (2026). Teaching Metacognition™ Framework: A framework for developing motivated, self-regulated, and autonomous learners [Instructional framework]. Team Metacognition, LLC. https://www.teammetacognition.com/post/introducing-the-teaching-metacognition-framework

Conry, J., & Navas, A. G. (2026). Teaching Metacognition™ Educator Survey [Survey instrument]. Team Metacognition, LLC. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfyaajGeYBZXU7VQ0p_EAamEleD6v6neOUOTgA1y67MO6W5Rg/viewform?usp=header