Reflection Strategies

Teachers who promote reflective classrooms ensure that students are fully engaged in the process of making meaning. They organize instruction so that students are the producers, not just the consumers, of knowledge. To best guide children in the habits of reflection, these teachers approach their role as that of "facilitator of meaning making."

Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind (Edited by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick)

The two approaches to reflection I have been using in my classes this bimester are Reflection and Action Plans with my 5B students after their unit tests and a weekly reflection with S3 using the portfolio.

Here is an excerpt from a 5B reflection. There is a clear link to the assessment task, but students are encouraged to give their “future selves” advice on how to approach future assessment. While it is solely focused on assessment, there is good student buy in with this type of activity. By doing this for every major assessment, it will give the students a good place to start when they begin preparing for examinations.

One of the drawbacks with this approach is often their action plans are a little superficial, although this does tend to improve over time.

I shared a version of this with the rest of the science department for use with the S4 groups after the recent mock exams. It was interesting that some of them turned it into a Google Doc, something I hadn’t considered and it helped inform their revision this term.

This is a weekly reflection taken from the Portfolio from an S3 student. For this week, I asked the students to reflect on their recent assessments, which gives an opportunity to compare the approaches.

Considering the lack of scaffolding, it is an impressive piece of writing. I ask my S3 students to write reflections every week, and their writing skills have certainly developed.

There is still an aspect of description, rather than reflection and I see this as the biggest challenge going forward.

It should be noted that both these students are high achieving, and that many students do not reflect in the same depth or clarity. There is also the issue of student buy in. Speaking to some S4 students about the weekly reflection, they were skeptical about the benefits. The challenge is to approach reflection in a way that students feel it is worthwhile, overcoming this is a work in progress.