I think written reflections are a wonderful tool to use with reading and writing. Reflecting by writing it down is a great way to reinforce/recall learning. It also helps the student see what they accomplished.
My students do not do written reflections on their learning. The three that are in the interrelated room the most do not have writing capabilities. Two of them do verbal reflections of task they have learned. The other students do written reflections in class. They struggle with this (even when we coach them), because of the lack of writing done in earlier years.
I agree that the lack of student's writing skills is hard to do written reflections on. Even my high school students can seem to get capitalization and punctuation. Other times their ideas are often lost in bad grammar skills that decoding their writing is a challenge in itself. Especially when they don't even remember what they wrote!
Writing is tough because many of my students are poor writers, struggle with language issues, lack instruction, and lack of motivation. Unless I am very specific with my expectations and ask them to keep working until they meet my expectations, most of my students do not produce quality writing. It takes time, training, and creativity. I agree that writing can be incredibly helpful in the classroom, but can be difficult and frustrating.
I have not done written reflections very often, but may have to do some. I think it would make students more accountable in their actions and their learning. When it appears in writing in makes it more real!! Harder to deny but also easier to take credit for you work.
I agree with you! I think more accountable and the information is actually retained!! When a student has to fully explain something rather than memorize, a greater understanding has to be present.
Writing can be SO helpful. While I don't do a ton of writing in my class. it always is a helpful gauge of student thinking and understanding. I definitely agree that it helps students more accountable.
I think written reflections are a good opportunity to practice writing skills because it is their personal experience so they can spend more time focusing on the writing task rather than looking up information and making sure their answers are correct. As for how written reflections affect learning, all careers require some level of self reflection. Having to look back over your day, week, semester, or school year and evaluate your work/learning is a good thing. I know I look back over my teaching often and say, "wow that did/did not work well. What do I need to do better next time?" If I was not, I would not be working to become a better teacher. Students need to understand they need to look back over their learning process and reflect on what worked well and what did not so they can become better learners. Meta cognition--thinking about thinking.
I agree that knowing how to do written reflections is a skill that alot of jobs use for evaluations. Unfortuantely I currently do not use them in my classroom. I have before but just going through the explanation and process was more trouble than it was worth! My sped kids really did not get the concept. I should try it again now though, it might work better this time around.
I like the idea of using written reflections for both writing and learning. However, I do not use them in my classroom. I have tried them in the past and found it be very difficult for my sped students. The meta-cognition aspect of it that Heather mentioned above is a very challenging concept for my students to grasp. At times they barely seem to be able to answer basic comprehension questions let alone higher level thinking skills. It is an area I would like to revisit and try again. Since I loop too I have my students for 3 years. I think starting small when they are in the 6th grade and gradually increasing the expectations of the reflections through to 8th grade would be the best way for me to use it in my classroom. Writing is such a key element now in Common Core that anything we can do in that area would be great plus giving them a life skill that alot of jobs have now as part of their evaluations.
My students who've been given a written reflections assignment in English struggle with the concept. Hopefully if this is being done in the grade school, it won't be such a foreign idea to our students.
Not to mention our favorite state assessment makes them justify their answers with a written explanation of why or how. At least at the high school level anyway. SO I do think it is good practice for them at those lower levels.
What is your opinion of using written reflections by the students both in terms of learning and writing? I think written reflections are great, for some students. I have many students in my room that gain great strides by writing daily and using different writing strategies to complete their written work. I think reflections about assignments and new information in the written form can be great. I also know that written reflection for some of my kids daily is just not going to happen. And for those same kids is not going to benefit them. I think writing does help everyone, but with the wide spread of kids many of us have in Special Education it is not always so cut and dry.
Do you have your students do reflections on their learning? How could that be incorporated into what you are teaching.? I try to have kids do reflections on what we are learning. So many times it is easy with my kids that are in the general education classroom for the whole day to get wrapped up in the test and the homework of a class. I do like to try and take something they are learning in the gen. ed. classroom and do a reflection type of assignment in my room with in. Critical thinking skills are gained so much when I take the time to do this and I think it is important.
I think using a written reflection from students is a great idea IF they can write. Most of my students have very limited writing ability and struggle to write simple words and put sentences together. But, in a regular classroom or with higher ability students I can see a huge benefit. It could help guide direction and help the teacher reflect on whet went well or what didn't. I can see great possibilities.
I do not use them because of my students' abilities. But I thought I could use a speech to text app for them to do it! This will also help them see their sentences formed and put into text!
This would definately have to be adapted for our students. I wonder how the arthor does this for his lower functioning students? I can see using dictation but jsut getting them to think this way can be a real struggle!!
I agree with you and think that a speech-to-text app would be much more appropriate for a lot of our students in completing this task. However, I know in some instances, we've run into problems with this option as well because the student's speech is unclear, they talk too fast, etc., so the resulting output isn't all too great either.
I like the idea of students doing written reflections. I think that is one aspect of reading education that has picked up in some of my districts since they don’t have AR to monitor their students’ reading. Students have to do something that is usually written to report on what they’ve read. I think it requires them to work on their writing skills while reflecting on the book they finished.
I don’t have students do many written reflections. We talk about their learning and the activities or projects they’ve worked on with me. However, I think that would be one area that I could improve. I would like to have students write more, either paper pencil or on a word processing program. I would like to have them reflect at the end of projects, and even with larger projects, reflect at a few points part way through.
One negative I have seen with written reflections of books they are reading to replace AR is, unless the teacher has read the book, they do not know if what the student is writing is really a reflection of the book. I have seen several of my students write something, even though I know they have never even opened the book. It is difficult as a support teacher because I know the reg ed kids are doing the same thing, but are not getting caught. Is it fair that my students get caught because of their involvement with my support staff while other kids are able to get by with the same behavior?
While I think that written reflections are good in theory, they have some drawbacks too. My students lack basic grammar skills and so even when proofreading an essay for their English with them it can be very challenging. For some students it turns into a high level of frustration just to re-read their work. I can only imagine the results I would get if they had to write a reflection for me. Not to mention that with 7 classes everyday and learning and growing in each of them, which one does the student write about? Do we rotate through the classes?
At this time I do not use written reflections in my class, nor do other teachers in my building. However I do use student conferences. Once a month I go though and chat with the students about “How it’s going?” I take notes and keep track of what they tell me. Sometimes they don’t give themselves enough credit for what their abilities actually are!
I agree with the difficulty with basic grammar, etc. But even if they can get a basic point across, the author was saying it is neat to seem them go back and correct their own reflections after that stuff improves along the year. But, I agree that to diminish the frustrations, verbal feedback is amazing. I have some students take verbal tests because they can do so much better explaining things through conversation than writing it down.
I like the idea of reflections as a learning tool, but agree that it can be SUPER frustrating to some of our kiddos in regard to the writing aspect and just getting something coherent down on paper. I think speech-to-text programs are a good alternative for some of our kiddos (if their speech is intelligible to the program), but also really like Stacy's idea of just using student conferences instead.
I think reflection is an extremely important tool for improvement and success in any field! Recognizing strengths and weakness of a process and also of yourself for improvement will continue growth in ways of seeking out how to implement the strengths and work on the weaknesses. For a student to be able to recognize, on their own, their strengths and weakness is quite powerful. Rather than constantly hearing from a teacher what they need to do better, they have realize how they can fix or improve things to help themselves independently- this gives them confidence and power of their learning. I do have students reflect on their learning, but not nearly as I should, I don't think. I really loved Solarz examples of the eportfolios and questionnaires. I think the questionnaires will be a good place to start though I would love to utilize eportfolios in the future! I do quite a few interactive notebooks that build on the learning and students have then to refer to when needed. I think I could improve this with the students having their reflections/questionnaires along with them. Then each notebook could build a portfolio (attach all in a binder according to subject). I do like the paperless idea though! So much paper goes into notebooks and binders. Also, I have a lot of kids that throw away their work :( this really made me think of when he talked about turning their work into meaningful learning rather than worrying about the grade, then it being over. Baby steps I guess..
I liked the idea of the eportfolios as well, especially the idea that a project is never really "finished" and can continue to be improved as new ideas come.
I am real unsure how I would use this with my Kindergartners since they are just starting to write words let alone sentences. At the beginning of the year we do a lot of questionnaire in the classroom verbally to get to know the kids, kind of like an ice breaker activity.
Written reflection has many positive effects for a student's learning and reflection. It forces students to slow their thought process down, explain what they know and how they know it, and helps them to think about the topic in a deeper way. Unless it is coached, practiced, and checked regularly, students may breeze through written reflections quickly, making it a waste of time.
I use journaling everyday in my reading intervention hour. I also use it occasionally in my math class to help students write about math and gauge their understanding of specific topic. I've also used apology letters, letters of request, e-mails to teachers, and free writing in my classroom.
I can see how written reflections would be beneficial to the teacher in being able to judge where their students are with a certain concept, what was learned, what their next steps should be with instruction, etc. And I can also see how this might benefit the student as well by making them more aware of exactly what they understand, what they still need some more help with, etc. However, in saying all of that, I also remember writing THOUSANDS (Ok, maybe it wasn’t quite that many, haha!) of 2-3 page reflections papers for my virtual grad school courses about EVERYTHING, and by the end of the semester, I was ready to just throw my computer out the window! The overkill of the assignments just made me dread them rather than thinking of them as a tool for my own benefit, as it was likely, partially, intended.
I love the idea of written reflections. This tool is something I was taught going through college that after teaching a lesson or finishing a project to sit down and reflect upon what happened both the good and bad and things you think you could change in the future. This is something that would have to be taught to students but I think after they have an understanding of self reflection it could be a really good tool for the students and the teacher to see how things are going and what changes may need to be made.
This sounds a lot like the old meta-cognition strategies we learned in methods classes 25 years ago. I see it as another way to help students learn how to learn by reflecting on how their attempts are working for them. It wouldn't have to be a chore for kids who have trouble writing if they could respond verbally, or using a Dragon Dictate on the iPad. Self-reflection is a necessary first step of growth and builds accountability and ownership.
I think written reflections are a wonderful tool to use with reading and writing. Reflecting by writing it down is a great way to reinforce/recall learning. It also helps the student see what they accomplished.
ReplyDeleteMy students do not do written reflections on their learning. The three that are in the interrelated room the most do not have writing capabilities. Two of them do verbal reflections of task they have learned. The other students do written reflections in class. They struggle with this (even when we coach them), because of the lack of writing done in earlier years.
I agree that the lack of student's writing skills is hard to do written reflections on. Even my high school students can seem to get capitalization and punctuation. Other times their ideas are often lost in bad grammar skills that decoding their writing is a challenge in itself. Especially when they don't even remember what they wrote!
DeleteWriting is tough because many of my students are poor writers, struggle with language issues, lack instruction, and lack of motivation. Unless I am very specific with my expectations and ask them to keep working until they meet my expectations, most of my students do not produce quality writing. It takes time, training, and creativity. I agree that writing can be incredibly helpful in the classroom, but can be difficult and frustrating.
DeleteI have not done written reflections very often, but may have to do some. I think it would make students more accountable in their actions and their learning. When it appears in writing in makes it more real!! Harder to deny but also easier to take credit for you work.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points! I usually think of the writing as self-reflective, but it would be helpful when looking at collaborative assignments.
DeleteI agree with you! I think more accountable and the information is actually retained!! When a student has to fully explain something rather than memorize, a greater understanding has to be present.
DeleteWriting can be SO helpful. While I don't do a ton of writing in my class. it always is a helpful gauge of student thinking and understanding. I definitely agree that it helps students more accountable.
DeleteI think written reflections are a good opportunity to practice writing skills because it is their personal experience so they can spend more time focusing on the writing task rather than looking up information and making sure their answers are correct. As for how written reflections affect learning, all careers require some level of self reflection. Having to look back over your day, week, semester, or school year and evaluate your work/learning is a good thing. I know I look back over my teaching often and say, "wow that did/did not work well. What do I need to do better next time?" If I was not, I would not be working to become a better teacher. Students need to understand they need to look back over their learning process and reflect on what worked well and what did not so they can become better learners. Meta cognition--thinking about thinking.
ReplyDeleteI agree that knowing how to do written reflections is a skill that alot of jobs use for evaluations. Unfortuantely I currently do not use them in my classroom. I have before but just going through the explanation and process was more trouble than it was worth! My sped kids really did not get the concept. I should try it again now though, it might work better this time around.
DeleteI like the idea of using written reflections for both writing and learning. However, I do not use them in my classroom. I have tried them in the past and found it be very difficult for my sped students. The meta-cognition aspect of it that Heather mentioned above is a very challenging concept for my students to grasp. At times they barely seem to be able to answer basic comprehension questions let alone higher level thinking skills. It is an area I would like to revisit and try again. Since I loop too I have my students for 3 years. I think starting small when they are in the 6th grade and gradually increasing the expectations of the reflections through to 8th grade would be the best way for me to use it in my classroom. Writing is such a key element now in Common Core that anything we can do in that area would be great plus giving them a life skill that alot of jobs have now as part of their evaluations.
ReplyDeleteMy students who've been given a written reflections assignment in English struggle with the concept. Hopefully if this is being done in the grade school, it won't be such a foreign idea to our students.
DeleteNot to mention our favorite state assessment makes them justify their answers with a written explanation of why or how. At least at the high school level anyway. SO I do think it is good practice for them at those lower levels.
DeleteWhat is your opinion of using written reflections by the students both in terms of learning and writing?
ReplyDeleteI think written reflections are great, for some students. I have many students in my room that gain great strides by writing daily and using different writing strategies to complete their written work. I think reflections about assignments and new information in the written form can be great. I also know that written reflection for some of my kids daily is just not going to happen. And for those same kids is not going to benefit them. I think writing does help everyone, but with the wide spread of kids many of us have in Special Education it is not always so cut and dry.
Do you have your students do reflections on their learning? How could that be incorporated into what you are teaching.? I try to have kids do reflections on what we are learning. So many times it is easy with my kids that are in the general education classroom for the whole day to get wrapped up in the test and the homework of a class. I do like to try and take something they are learning in the gen. ed. classroom and do a reflection type of assignment in my room with in. Critical thinking skills are gained so much when I take the time to do this and I think it is important.
I think doing them daily would be too much also. I think weekly or when you see a teachable moment would be effective.
DeleteI think using a written reflection from students is a great idea IF they can write. Most of my students have very limited writing ability and struggle to write simple words and put sentences together. But, in a regular classroom or with higher ability students I can see a huge benefit. It could help guide direction and help the teacher reflect on whet went well or what didn't. I can see great possibilities.
ReplyDeleteI do not use them because of my students' abilities. But I thought I could use a speech to text app for them to do it! This will also help them see their sentences formed and put into text!
This would definately have to be adapted for our students. I wonder how the arthor does this for his lower functioning students? I can see using dictation but jsut getting them to think this way can be a real struggle!!
DeleteGood point, Carol. So far, I haven't seen any reference to lower functioning students in this book. I wonder what/how he handles those situations.
DeleteShaina-
DeleteI agree with you and think that a speech-to-text app would be much more appropriate for a lot of our students in completing this task. However, I know in some instances, we've run into problems with this option as well because the student's speech is unclear, they talk too fast, etc., so the resulting output isn't all too great either.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of students doing written reflections. I think that is one aspect of reading education that has picked up in some of my districts since they don’t have AR to monitor their students’ reading. Students have to do something that is usually written to report on what they’ve read. I think it requires them to work on their writing skills while reflecting on the book they finished.
ReplyDeleteI don’t have students do many written reflections. We talk about their learning and the activities or projects they’ve worked on with me. However, I think that would be one area that I could improve. I would like to have students write more, either paper pencil or on a word processing program. I would like to have them reflect at the end of projects, and even with larger projects, reflect at a few points part way through.
One negative I have seen with written reflections of books they are reading to replace AR is, unless the teacher has read the book, they do not know if what the student is writing is really a reflection of the book. I have seen several of my students write something, even though I know they have never even opened the book. It is difficult as a support teacher because I know the reg ed kids are doing the same thing, but are not getting caught. Is it fair that my students get caught because of their involvement with my support staff while other kids are able to get by with the same behavior?
DeleteWhile I think that written reflections are good in theory, they have some drawbacks too. My students lack basic grammar skills and so even when proofreading an essay for their English with them it can be very challenging. For some students it turns into a high level of frustration just to re-read their work. I can only imagine the results I would get if they had to write a reflection for me. Not to mention that with 7 classes everyday and learning and growing in each of them, which one does the student write about? Do we rotate through the classes?
ReplyDeleteAt this time I do not use written reflections in my class, nor do other teachers in my building. However I do use student conferences. Once a month I go though and chat with the students about “How it’s going?” I take notes and keep track of what they tell me. Sometimes they don’t give themselves enough credit for what their abilities actually are!
I agree with the difficulty with basic grammar, etc. But even if they can get a basic point across, the author was saying it is neat to seem them go back and correct their own reflections after that stuff improves along the year. But, I agree that to diminish the frustrations, verbal feedback is amazing. I have some students take verbal tests because they can do so much better explaining things through conversation than writing it down.
DeleteI like the idea of reflections as a learning tool, but agree that it can be SUPER frustrating to some of our kiddos in regard to the writing aspect and just getting something coherent down on paper. I think speech-to-text programs are a good alternative for some of our kiddos (if their speech is intelligible to the program), but also really like Stacy's idea of just using student conferences instead.
DeleteI think reflection is an extremely important tool for improvement and success in any field! Recognizing strengths and weakness of a process and also of yourself for improvement will continue growth in ways of seeking out how to implement the strengths and work on the weaknesses. For a student to be able to recognize, on their own, their strengths and weakness is quite powerful. Rather than constantly hearing from a teacher what they need to do better, they have realize how they can fix or improve things to help themselves independently- this gives them confidence and power of their learning.
ReplyDeleteI do have students reflect on their learning, but not nearly as I should, I don't think. I really loved Solarz examples of the eportfolios and questionnaires. I think the questionnaires will be a good place to start though I would love to utilize eportfolios in the future! I do quite a few interactive notebooks that build on the learning and students have then to refer to when needed. I think I could improve this with the students having their reflections/questionnaires along with them. Then each notebook could build a portfolio (attach all in a binder according to subject). I do like the paperless idea though! So much paper goes into notebooks and binders. Also, I have a lot of kids that throw away their work :( this really made me think of when he talked about turning their work into meaningful learning rather than worrying about the grade, then it being over. Baby steps I guess..
I liked the idea of the eportfolios as well, especially the idea that a project is never really "finished" and can continue to be improved as new ideas come.
DeleteI am real unsure how I would use this with my Kindergartners since they are just starting to write words let alone sentences. At the beginning of the year we do a lot of questionnaire in the classroom verbally to get to know the kids, kind of like an ice breaker activity.
ReplyDeleteWritten reflection has many positive effects for a student's learning and reflection. It forces students to slow their thought process down, explain what they know and how they know it, and helps them to think about the topic in a deeper way. Unless it is coached, practiced, and checked regularly, students may breeze through written reflections quickly, making it a waste of time.
ReplyDeleteI use journaling everyday in my reading intervention hour. I also use it occasionally in my math class to help students write about math and gauge their understanding of specific topic. I've also used apology letters, letters of request, e-mails to teachers, and free writing in my classroom.
I can see how written reflections would be beneficial to the teacher in being able to judge where their students are with a certain concept, what was learned, what their next steps should be with instruction, etc. And I can also see how this might benefit the student as well by making them more aware of exactly what they understand, what they still need some more help with, etc. However, in saying all of that, I also remember writing THOUSANDS (Ok, maybe it wasn’t quite that many, haha!) of 2-3 page reflections papers for my virtual grad school courses about EVERYTHING, and by the end of the semester, I was ready to just throw my computer out the window! The overkill of the assignments just made me dread them rather than thinking of them as a tool for my own benefit, as it was likely, partially, intended.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of written reflections. This tool is something I was taught going through college that after teaching a lesson or finishing a project to sit down and reflect upon what happened both the good and bad and things you think you could change in the future. This is something that would have to be taught to students but I think after they have an understanding of self reflection it could be a really good tool for the students and the teacher to see how things are going and what changes may need to be made.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds a lot like the old meta-cognition strategies we learned in methods classes 25 years ago. I see it as another way to help students learn how to learn by reflecting on how their attempts are working for them. It wouldn't have to be a chore for kids who have trouble writing if they could respond verbally, or using a Dragon Dictate on the iPad. Self-reflection is a necessary first step of growth and builds accountability and ownership.
ReplyDelete