Helping Children Think About Their Thinking: Linking Metacognition and AFL at Heathlands Primary School

Darryl Crawley shares insights on one of the key teaching priorities at Heathlands: helping children understand how they learn, not only what they learn. Darryl explains how combining metacognition with high quality Assessment for Learning is strengthening pupils’ independence, confidence, and resilience across the school.

As headteacher at Heathlands CofE Primary School, Essex, one of my core priorities is to help pupils grow into confident and independent learners. I want our children not only to know things, but to understand how they learn, why they learn, and how to overcome challenges when learning becomes difficult. This is why metacognition and Assessment for Learning sit at the centre of our work on teaching and learning.

Why This Matters

The evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation shows that when pupils are explicitly taught how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning, they make exceptional progress. These approaches make a particularly strong difference for pupils who face disadvantage. They give children tools they can rely on, no matter their starting point or subject.

Metacognition helps children manage their own thinking. Assessment for Learning gives them clarity about what they need to learn, how to improve, and what success looks like. When these two approaches work together, pupils become active participants in their learning rather than passive recipients. They learn how to think, not only what to think.

For me, this goes to the heart of what we want for every child at Heathlands. Confidence. Resilience. Ownership. These are the qualities that shape lifelong learners.

*^{EEF Metacognition and self-regulated learning guidance report}*

What the Research Says

The EEF highlights that metacognition is most effective when strategies are explicitly taught and then gradually embedded into everyday classroom practice. Children benefit when:

Teachers model their thinking out loud, narrating the decisions an expert learner makes.
Strategies are scaffolded and revisited until pupils can use them independently.
Pupils are encouraged to set goals, self-check their progress, and evaluate how successful they were and why.

EEF Metacognition 2 — ^{EEF Metacognition and self-regulated learning guidance report – Recommendation 2}

The EEF’s Metacognition summary of recommendations gives a clear structure for this, moving from activating prior knowledge to independent practice. Crucially, it positions pupils not as passive recipients of knowledge but as active participants who direct and manage their own learning.

Alongside this sits Assessment for Learning, which helps pupils understand:

Where they are now
Where they are going
How to get there

AfL enables pupils to “think like teachers”. They learn to analyse success criteria, compare their current position to the desired outcome, and make informed decisions about next steps. Your recent talk highlighted that AfL provides the external feedback loop (clarity, information, misconceptions, next steps), while metacognition strengthens the internal thinking loop (planning, monitoring, evaluating).

Together, they create what the EEF describes as high-impact, low-cost approaches that disproportionately benefit disadvantaged pupils: a key driver in our school-wide strategy.

Metacognition at Heathlands

At Heathlands we are making deliberate connections between metacognition, AfL, and our growing Visible Learning ethos. Our focus is not simply on children producing the correct answer. Instead, we celebrate the process: the strategy chosen, the resilience shown, the reflection afterwards. When a child earns a Celebration Certificate, it often recognises exactly those metacognitive moves we want to make visible.

For example, in Year 3, our work on the theme of confidence through Roald Dahl texts has provided rich opportunities for children to explore the strategies characters use when facing challenges. We encourage pupils to ask themselves:

“How did Matilda overcome a problem?”
“What steps did she take?”
“What could I try in my own work?”

These moments help children see that becoming a successful learner is not about being naturally gifted: it is about knowing how to learn!

EEF Metacognition 3 — ^{EEF Metacognition and self-regulated learning guidance report – Recommendation 3}

Across school, teachers are increasingly using language that supports metacognitive development:

“What’s your plan?”
“How are you checking if it’s working?”
“What will you do differently next time?”

These prompts help children take ownership of their learning and begin to internalise the thinking processes that strong learners use instinctively.

Practical Examples in the Classroom

Metacognition and AfL aren’t abstract concepts, instead they are visible in simple, everyday routines across Heathlands:

In maths, pupils are encouraged to identify what they already know before choosing a method, and to reflect afterwards on whether their chosen strategy was the most effective.
In writing, checklists and success criteria become tools for self-monitoring, not just boxes to tick at the end.
In reading, pupils are explicitly taught questioning strategies so that they monitor their own understanding as they go.
In discussions, teachers make thinking visible by modelling the internal dialogue: “I’m noticing… I’m wondering… I’m going to try…”
In feedback sessions, AfL routines help pupils understand exactly what they need to do next — and metacognitive routines help them act on it.

These routines encourage pupils to slow down, think carefully, and make deliberate choices thus reinforcing the belief that learning is an active, strategic process.

Conclusion

Metacognition and Assessment for Learning together provide pupils with the knowledge of where they are, where they are going, and how to get there. They also help them understand how to think effectively and how to take responsibility for their progress.

By embedding these approaches across Heathlands, we are supporting children to become confident, resilient, reflective, and independent learners. This is not only about improving outcomes in the classroom. It is about giving every child a set of thinking tools they can carry with them far beyond primary school.

References

Education Endowment Foundation Implementation Guidance: Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning | EEF, Accessed 14 November 2025.

Education Endowment Foundation Implementation Guidance: Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning | EEF, Accessed 14 November 2025.

By Darryl Crawley, Headteacher at Heathlands Primary School

Originally posted on the Essex Research School blog:

https://researchschool.org.uk/essex/news/helping-children-think-about-their-thinking

Read other Evidence Led Practice blog posts here.