Wednesday 12 August 2015

Our "Reflection Station"

Through our interest in personalising learning and more recently our drive to have learners 'find agency' in the classroom, Jemma and I discussed the importance of REFLECTION for students. Without an understanding of the importance of it and without us scaffolding the need to do it REGULARLY learners will struggle to find 'true agency'. We know reflection should occur more often in the learning cycle than just at the end of the week...and it does during everyday conferences and discussions...but we have always given reflection 'to do' on a Friday (although we do encourage/ expect reflection throughout any learning experience but formally it 'gets done' at the end of the week).

So how could we infuse reflection into the 'everyday'? 

Speaking with some of our connected teachers, together we came up with the idea of a 'reflection station'. A station set up every morning which is there for WHENEVER a learner wants/needs to reflect. 

We felt it might get more 'traction' if we used Twitter as the platform and had it live through a data projector so they could see any comments or replies coming back. We have created 3 hashtags for the kids to use:

  • #theONE6www     what went well
  • #theONE6aqih       a question I have
  • #theONE6ioto       in order to improve

We also put up a number of questions learners can use to help them reflect on their learning.

We have selected a student to be our 'reflection station' monitor (Cameron uses Twitter and our hashtags regularly nearly everyday to reflect so who better than to 'be in charge').