Metacognition is the process of thinking back over your mental actions and determining where or how you may have ended up where you are in a problem solving situation. Often, you can use metacognition to modify your approach to a problem. Essentially, you are judging your current attempts to solve a problem and then either eliminating or changing those attempts to arrive at a solution. You may see a mistake you made such as not following directions accurately or actually thinking in the wrong way about a problem. Try it if you are having trouble solving a problem and modify your approach if necessary.

Here are some interesting problems to try. As you attempt to solve them, reflect back on the solutions you try and think about approaching the problem differently or eliminate unsuccessful answers.

Problem One: A college professor was admiring a new door which the college had installed in his classroom. He turned to his students and said, “I want you to rearrange the letters in the two words ‘new door,’ to make one word. You have five minutes to solve this problem.”

Problem Two: In a progression problem, if these numbers are presented 77,49,36,18... what is the next number and why?

If you decide not to use your new thinking skills, you can click here.