Pull From the Reflection Pool

Beyond major strategies like portfolios, journals, presentations, diaries, blogs, etc. as facilitators of reflection we often want quick tools to provoke reflection. Below are some ideas that can be completed in 20 mins or less.

Guest Post courtesy of Stuart MacAlpine and Anna Carr

Inspired in part by Jennifer Moon's work

Creative Commons Image from Pexels

Model reflection before expecting it

A first move is to share some examples of reflection with students, and perhaps ask them to rank or organise them according to critieria, such as 'depth of reflection'.

Footprints

Students identify a particular moment of learning or event. Invite students draw footprints (or stepping stones) and write five chronological events or learnings that lead them to that moment or event. A good making thinking visible strategy for awareness and analysis.

Descriptive, Personal, Reflective

Ask students to write a description of an event they were involved in using an objective and third person voice.

Then ask students to rewrite the event in first person including their feelings and perspectives

Finally as them to write about what impact that experience has had on them.

Five Whys

In pairs, one students makes a statement about an experience of event.

The other student asks why, awaits until the other student has finished their response, then asks why again... and repeats until they have asked why five times.

Four Corners

Name 4 corners or the classroom Self; Others; Community; Society and the World

Ask students to think about a recent experience, then go to the corner that you connect with the experience. The corners represent the focus of the connection you had in that experience and the main learning you may have had.

In the corner discuss the experiences you have had.

SELF- thoughts, ideas, values, feelings, strengths, ethics, opinions, values, actions, hope

OTHERS- peers, people, meet/interact

COMMUNITY- places to interact, noticing concerns, successes, trends, ideas, culture, value

SOCIETY and the WORLD- big picture, insights and understanding.

Walk and talk

Take a group walk, with students talking and walking with a partner.

Quotes

Ask students to bring in a quote that is reflective of a recent CAS experience. Randomly select several and place them on the wall. Students gather around the quote that most represents their thoughts or feelings regarding a CAS experience. This can also be done with song lyrics or melodies. This can be repeated with other quotes, lyrics and melodies.

Silent Drawing

Spread out large sheets of paper. Ask students to enter the room and ask for silence. Students consider a common group experience or simply what has been occurring in CAS and draw, in silence. This typically lasts 3–5 minutes. Then ask the students to add two words. Based on the words, students can select three words from anywhere on the paper and use these to write a short poem or haiku.

Cartoon or Meme

Ask students to create a meme or cartoon to represent an event or moment of learning, and share and explain to a a partner or the group.

Capturing the moment

Ask students to come to a CAS group meeting and to bring a photograph that captures, without any additional words, something meaningful in a CAS experience: a photo that says it all. Share without commentary from the photographer.

Using a scale

Invent a scale, say one to ten, for a particular feature of an experience like 'how important was this experience?', 'how bad was this experience?', 'how much learning was there'. Invite students to pick a level on the scale and explain.

Using a graph

Same as the above, but invent a graph to show feelings over time, or learning over time, or intensity of engagement (awareness), and support students in identifying why it was at this level (analysis) and then what they might do to make it more as they wish (application)

Compare accounts

As two students who shared an experience, to record it in first person, including feelings and thoughts. Then invite them to read and compare each other's accounts.

Act it out

Ask students to act out a scene from their service learning and explain why it is important. Good for awareness and analysis.

Pick an object

Either from a group of objects curated by the facilitator, or brought in by students for this purpose, students choose an object that represents their experiences and explain why it does (awareness).

Concept map

Ask students to create a concept map with all the important actions, emotions, and thoughts connected to a particular event.

Writing a letter you will not send

Invite students to write a letter to a real or imaginary person who is connected to their experiences - this could be cathartic or clarifying for students.

Currere

This is a technique from Pinar. The task is to write briefly about an event and how it relates to your past in one paragraph, your present in another, and your future.

Path not taken

Invite students to write about something they did not choose to do, and explore what that might have felt like or lead on to compared to what they did choose to do.

Doodle

Ask students to draw doodles that reflect their thinking and ideas, and then share them with a partner and explain what they see in their doodle.

Draw yourself or your project as a tree

Invite students to draw a tree that represents your project or yourself and explain the choices they made

Blob Tree

Use a blob tree image and ask students to identify who they are in the tree and why

Road Map

Ask students to draw a road map, with road signs, of their current situation.

What if?

Ask students in pairs to ask each other 'what if' questions about their current situation.

Me, My relationships, my community, our world

Ask students to think about the significance of an experience through these concentric circles of influence.

Metaphors and Similes

Ask students to create similes or metaphors for an event. "This event is a boulder rolling down hill" and then share why they chose that metaphor.

SWOT Analysis

Use a simple 'strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats' grid to reflect on a current situation or a prior one.

Digital Bytes 20th February 2017

	Kindness: A Lesson Plan The folks at Edutopia have put together another great article on ways of incorporating more kindness into your classroom. With detailed suggestions and resources, you are bound to get some new ideas to enhance your personal and social education lessons. We could all use a little more kindness in our lives.
	Starter Questions for Seesaw reflection During a twitter chat on the weekend about portfolios, one of the teachers shared a padlet of questions prompts and sentence starters that students can use for reflection. Sometimes, reflections can become “same-y” and a little stale. Why not refresh your reflections with this padlet?
	Spreadsheet Activities for Every Subject Eric Curts has put together 5 ways spreadsheets can be used by students. Check out his webinar, or scroll down to explore each of the 5 suggestions in a shorter format. I think the pixel art challenge could be a fun activity!

Reflection rebranded?

What can we do to repackage the concept of reflection for our students and ourselves?

"Reflection isn't a single thing, a box to check in some elliptical cycle of learning. It's as much a matter of self-awareness, humility, and affection as it is of timing, sequence, and procedure." (Read full Edutopia post here)

Educators have been asking students to engage with reflection for decades.  The formal role of reflection can be seen across the Diploma Programme. As we work towards motivating independence, inquiry, and risk-taking in our student body, we also work towards better approaches of reflection.  

Could podcasting allow us access to collaborative reflection?

This week I sat down with six members of Initiative for Peace in order to test that notion.

"Initiative for Peace (IfP) is an action-based programme that offers UWCSEA students the opportunity to actively promote international understanding and reconciliation in areas of conflict. Since 2001, the IfP has empowered young people from Kashmir, Timor Leste and Sri Lanka to fulfill their potential as agents of change.

UWCSEA students and supporting staff supervisors spend a year planning these conferences, doing everything from sending applications out and selecting participants, to planning the conference programme and activities, to finding speakers and raising funds. They then facilitate and run the conferences, with the support of UWCSEA staff."

Enjoy our curated conversation and find out whether or not we can capture our awareness, analysis and application through this medium:

If you would like a DLC to help you podcastify reflection, just ask.

Podcasting as a tool of reflection for students and teachers

Can we podcast for better understanding of our teaching and learning practices?

This week  Grade 10 Enterprise teachers were kind enough to invite me in to see first hand what our young innovators are up to.  Episode three of Podcast UWCLearn attempts to capture some of their process and unpack what it means in the greater context of our school's mission and values.

If you would like to have a DLC help curate a podcast to be used later on for reflection, or as a means to keep your parent community informed, please schedule a chat soon.

I'm also happy to help department teams curate conversations.  Last but not least, if you want your students to do the podcasting, I'm happy to run an in class session to walk them through my ten step process.

Enjoy episode three:

Digital Bytes 6th June 2016

	Google Drive Templates - Because Caring is Sharing Who doesn’t love a good template? Erifili Davis has collated a post full of excellent Google Drive Templates, including the FakeBook one shown here. Check out her suggestions on timelines, presentations, written projects and social media templates.
	What Students Feel Learning in a State of Flow “Flow,” is a state of being where one is completely engaged and absorbed by what they are doing. Jackie Gerstein believes that one of the roles of educators today is to help set up conditions so learners achieve a state of flow. Read more about Gerstein’s suggestions for how to make this happen.
	3 End of Year Reflection Strategies for Students As the academic year comes to a close, many teachers are considering options for reflection so as to celebrate and highlight growth in learning. Rebecca Alber has put together some strategies that will engage students, rather than turn them off. Check them out!

Using Quicktime Screen Recording to Reflect

Students are always asked to reflect on their work. But how do we do this? Most of the time we get them to write a reflection. In my experience, these written reflections take a lot of time and students may not express their thoughts completely for a number of reasons. Students can be oversaturated by the sheer number of written reflections they are asked to complete and therefore don't always say everything they want to in their writing.

A great way around this is to have students use Quicktime screen recording on a Mac to show their thinking and reflect on their learning in a quick and simple way.

When most people think of Quicktime, they think of an application that is used to watch movies. However, there are three very useful functions available: movie recording using the isight camera, audio recording and screen recording. Although we have students use the movie recording function to capture videos of themselves and the audio recording to capture them speaking, I want to focus on the screen recording aspect.

When you select screen recording, the computer will record what is happening on your screen. You can either choose to have the whole screen or part of the screen to record. There are also options for the audio to be on (I always have it on so we can hear the students talk) and for the mouse clicks to be captured. I often use screen recordings to create tutorials for teachers, but they are perfect for students to reflect on their work and to capture their thinking.

In the example below, a student has used Quicktime to create a screen recording to explain the choices that they made when creating a poster. The student originally used Pages to create the poster and made 5 duplicate versions of the poster to gradually improve with each version. It didn't take long for the student to reflect on the process and what they did. This type of screen recording can prove very valuable to teachers.


Screen recording can take many forms for student reflections. Students can have a document written in Pages or Google Docs open and explain what they felt they did well and what they need to work on. They can highlight passages that show what they learned or what they were particularly proud of. If they are working on a specific skill, they could highlight where they have demonstrated that in their work.

When teachers start to see the value and ease at which these reflections can be made with Quicktime, they will realize that there are so many possibilities for using Quicktime screen recording in their classrooms.