Reflection in learning

Thank you to everyone that sent me your words for 2020. I really enjoyed reading them and hearing your thoughts. I've decided to choose the word "Focus" because I find that I let myself get distracted by competing priorities and I'm working to strike that proper balance between family, work, and my grad classes.

The reason for choosing a word for your year is to reflect. Reflection and metacognition are powerful ways to make learning stick. So this post will explore techniques for incorporating reflection into your classroom.

According to Bransford et al. (2000), "Metacognitive approaches to instruction have been shown to increase the degree to which students will transfer to new situations without the need for explicit prompting."  The strongest learning happens when the new knowledge can be applied in a different situation, as we know from models like Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge.  

Some of our instructional practices already contain the opportunity for students to reflect on their learning, such as Everyday Math, which prompts teachers to ask students about how secure they feel on particular skills or topics.  If you've ever used an exit ticket, you're using reflection.

Here are some effective ways to incorporate reflection in your instruction:

• White boards with reflection question - How do you feel about ______?  
• I can do it!
• I still need practice
• I need help!
• Exit tickets with a question prompt
• Think-Pair-Share
• Journaling
• Flipgrid
• Sentence stems, such as, "I used to think...but now I think...."
• Interactive notebooks

Add these to your teacher toolkit.  Now here is a reflection question for you:

What does it mean to have usable knowledge?

I'd love to hear your responses!

Critical thinking

When searching for a definition of critical thinking that would apply well to a classroom setting and the instructional design of a teacher, I was discovering that the meaning of this term is as diverse as the students in the classroom.  My favorite definition so far is over-simplified - "thinking to produce judgment" - clear, concise, to the point.  But the skill itself is at the highest levels of Webb's DOK - analyzing, synthesizing, supporting a claim.




Since learning is largely social, one of the best ways to get students to think critically about the judgments that they are making is to hear the alternative judgments that others are making and support the viewpoint with evidence.  Some great discussion techniques for the classroom include:

• Think, Pair, Share

• Four Corners

• Socratic Seminar

• Fishbowl

• De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats

Sometimes students who are not normally active participants in the in-class discussion can feel more successful with an online discussion, such as in Google Classroom.  Another website I ran across recently which allows students to participate in a discussion, make a claim and support it is Kialo.  According to Common Sense Education's review of the site, "It's a good platform to teach the importance of reasoned, respectful arguments when trying to persuade others."  It can be used to participate in public or private discussions through the teacher platform.  As we help students learn how to build an argument, it can also serve as ideas for good questions to get the students motivated to discuss.  

Students are participating in discussions online through social media, so hopefully as teachers we can use a site like this to guide them to be better 21st century digital citizens.