As educators, we reflect on our teaching practice every day in order to provide quality services to our students. We want to ensure that students get a great learning experience. So we reflect and apply our experiences in our classrooms. But do we give our students the same opportunities for reflection?
Reflection should be a natural part of learning. But often our students don’t know how to do this. They want to know what grade they received and how to get an A+ on the next test. The process of reflection is lost on them.
Metacognition is the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought process. This is what we want students to engage in order to be successful in the learning process. We can activate this through journal writing, deep questioning and self-reflection.
How often do we assign a signing project and have students turn it in, the teacher grades it then returns a rubric only to have the student look at the grade and throw the rubric away? Sound familiar?
Our goal as a teacher should be to have students reflect on what they
learned, analyze their mistakes, and make appropriate adjustments. Bottom line – we want students to make mistakes and learn from them. This enhances the learning experience. But do we allow this in our classrooms? Do we encourage failure and growth?
Ideas for Reflection
One idea is to have students reflect on a weekly basis to think about classroom instruction. Every Friday, students can spend 5 – 10 minutes reflecting on the week. They can write, sign, or discuss these four key questions that can prompte personal reflection:
- What did you learn this week?
- What activities helped you to learn?
- What activities did you find engaging?
- What questions or comments do you have for me?
I always like to have a copy of these to help me plan for the next week.
Another idea is to use exit tickets after lessons. Before students leave the classroom, have them write what they learned on a sticky note or respond to a premade question(s) by you.
I also like these reflection ideas from teachwriting.org. Take a look at these and see if it spaprks and ideas for you to use in your own classroom.
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