Chapter 15 page 378
King (1991) taught fifth graders to solve a variety of prompts problems using the cognitive prompts,
as illustrated in Figure 15.11. Collectively, these questions were designed to promote self-regulated
problem solving by encouraging effective goal setting, monitoring, and self-evaluation. Students who solved
problems using these strategies outperformed control students in two conditions, one condition in which
students were encouraged to asked questions of each other while solving the problems and another
condition in which students were not directed to ask each other questions (A. King, 1991).
Figure 15.11. Cognitive prompts for developing plans to solve a problem.
PLANNING
- What is the problem?
What are we trying to do here? - What do we know about the problem so far?
What information is given to us?
How can this help us? - What is out plan?
- Is there another way to do this?
What would happen if...? - What should we do next?
MONITORING- Are we using our plan or strategy?
Do we need a new plan?
Do we need a different strategy? - Has our goal changed?
What is our goal now? - Are we on the right track?
Are we getting closer to our goal?
EVALUATING - What worked?
- What didn’t work?
- What would we do differently next time?
These cognitive prompts direct students to engage in key cognitive processes needed to develop plans to
solve problems. They are designed to be generally useful on a wide range of problems.
Ann Britt and Cindy Aglinskas (2002) developed cognitive prompts to help students address one of
the common reasoning problems you learned about in Chapter 7—students’ failure to consider source
information when evaluating historical evidence. These researchers devised a task in which students
evaluated source documents that chronicled the events in Panama in 1903 that made it possible for the
United States to build the Panama Canal. For each document read, students filled out a card that directed
them to think explicitly about who the source was, what the sources motives might have been, how the
source knew what was claimed to be known, and so on. Figure 15.12 shows the information contained in
one of these cards.