A class of fifth grade students from Battle Academy will engage along side Forum participants as strategies and techniques for making thinking visible are introduced and explored. The session will occur in two parts: an active and interactive experience with the children, followed by an analytic conversation occurring in pairs, small groups, and whole group formats for Forum participants alone. This conversation will provide opportunities to de-contextualize the modeled metacognitive experience, questioning its' values and purposes for 21st Century learning.
 
The students will be in the midst of a unit integrating theatre, technology, and various writing processes. The theoretical focus for this unit of study is metacognition, illuminating and examining the thinking behaviors of students. In practice, the instructional goal is to guide students thinking behaviors, assisting as they become more individually and collectively aware of their intellectual choices, and recognizing the impact of knowledge and skill development on their thinking and the resulting outcomes. Costa & Kallick (2000) suggest infusing selective and specific thinking behaviors into units, lessons and learning tasks. By doing so, thinking becomes integral to learning, and learning about thinking becomes transferable to multiple environments and any content.   I am working to employ this theoretically framework within my own practice so that the learners I encounter begin to recognize the interdependence of content, thinking processes, and success as workers and citizens of the 21st Century.