Within teaching subject-matter content, teachers usually leave out higher order knowledge. Higher order knowledge is how the content is understood, learned and organized by students. Teaching content can be done without this "metacurriculum", but Perkins states that it is not as effective without it. An important point is that the metacurriculum is not a separate curriculum; it is blended in with the regular curriculum. Perkins outlines six key components of the metacurriculum: levels of understanding, languages of thinking, intellectual passions, integrative mental images, learning to learn and teaching for transfer.

Levels of understanding takes the curriculum beyond just facts to include solving problems and involving evidence and inquiry learning. These ways of learning incorporates reasoning and exploring into the teaching process.

Languages of thinking involves exercising the English language to foster thoughtfulness on the student's part. This includes the use of teacher vocabulary, contributing to cause and effect relationships, incorporating concept mapping and developing a thoughtful classroom culture.

Intellectual passions urge the importance of open-mindedness, wholeheartedness, and responsibility. The classroom must cultivate these attitudes within learning the content areas.

Integrative mental images refers to the varied kinds of representations that provide a cohesive bond between subject matters. These may include metaphors, analogies, concept maps or another kind of mental image that "ties it all together."

Learning to learn emphasizes that students are incremental learners, wherein their learning needs to be cultivated by the teacher with persistence.

Teaching for transfer requires the teacher to set up learning conditions that foster transfer of learning from one situation to another. This can be accomplished by helping the student make the connection between the two situations or by keeping the instruction close to the aspect of student performance.

This chapter offers six different ways in which a teacher can allow students to develop a better and more thorough understanding of the subject-matter content areas. Creating the metacurriculum is essential for students to do just that. Because it is not a separate curriculum, it can be easy for teachers to incorporate the metacurriculum into the everyday classroom. What it takes is discipline by the teacher to extend the student's thinking further than the memorization of facts.