Metacognition - Helping kids become Super Learners

To prepare students for the future, Nord Anglia Education (NAE) prioritises skills beyond core academics, focusing on developing empathetic, creative, and critical thinkers. Recognising that real-world challenges require complex solutions, NAE champions metacognition—‘thinking about thinking’—as a cornerstone of learning.

What is metacognition is in simple terms?

“Metacognition is the ability to be aware of our cognitive or thought processes and to monitor, reflect on and change those processes,” says Dr. Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner Centred Design at the UCL Knowledge Lab. As children get better at recognising their own thinking processes, they are then able to actively improve how they learn.

In partnership with Educate Ventures at University College London (UCL), NAE has refined metacognition into three components:

• Awareness: Understanding strengths, weaknesses, and strategies for improvement.
• Regulation: Selecting and adapting strategies for learning tasks.
• Transfer: Applying skills and knowledge in new contexts.

Thinking routines, developed by Project Zero at Harvard, guide students through steps or questions to deepen thinking and awareness. Simple prompts like “What makes you say that?” help build explanations, while more complex routines foster critical and creative thought.

Six “Learner Ambitions

A metacognitive framework of six “Learner Ambitions” has been developed to help our students develop the 6 Cs: to become Critical, Creative, Committed and Curious learners, working Compassionately and Collaboratively in the classroom and beyond.

At BSB, metacognition empowers students to take ownership of their learning. Primary and Key Stage 3 students are explicitly taught these skills, while in Key Stages 4 and 5, they are embedded within the IGCSE and IB Diploma programmes, equipping students to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

NAE Metacognition Leads from London

On 18^th November, we were delighted to welcome Sarah Jackson and Emily Murphy from our NAE central office in London, who are the global metacognition leads. We are very fortunate to have them on campus working with our parents, teachers and students.

Metacognition Parent Workshop

They also delivered a whole-school professional learning opportunity for our staff.

“Learner Ambitions” Student Learning Journey Example

Let’s take a peek at how our Primary students were introduced to the current Learner Ambition 'Curious'. Students from Teddies to Year 13 have spent 5 weeks learning what it meant to be Curious. The key strength we are focusing on is to Question and our students learnt to ask amazing questions to solve their curiosities.

Last month, we kicked off the first week with some Curious assemblies where students learnt about key words to ask questions. For example, in Primary, they used these skills to guess who a mystery guest was and worked with their Head of Year on stage to guess a mystery object.

Then over 5 weeks,  students enjoyed Metacognition lessons, setting themselves goals on how to use questions and reflected on their questioning skills in all subjects.

Please click here to watch a video with some our teachers sharing what they are Curious about.