Develop Pupils’ Metacognition and Self-Regulation to Increase Their Independence

Metacognition sits at the top of the EEF's Teaching and Learning Toolkit, alongside feedback. That doesn't make it easy to teach, and "thinking about thinking" doesn't tell you what to do with a Year 9 class on a wet Tuesday.

Here it's pinned down. Metacognition is pupils keeping track of their own learning and changing tack when something isn't working. You'll get a four-stage cycle (plan, monitor, evaluate, reflect) with questions pupils can ask themselves at each stage. There are six classroom strategies too, among them thinking aloud as you model a piece of writing, and setting work hard enough that pupils have to find a new approach but not so hard it swamps their working memory.

Most of it fits into lessons you already teach, which is the point: independence gets built in the subject, not in a separate study skills slot.