by Terry Heick
Reflection is a pure a part of studying.
All of us take into consideration new experiences–the tenting on the automobile journey residence, the errors made in a recreation, or the feelings felt whereas ending a long-term venture that’s taken months to finish.
Under I’ve shared 15 methods for college kids to replicate on their studying. Modeling the usage of every up entrance can go a good distance in direction of ensuring you get the standard of labor you’d prefer to see all year long–and college students study extra within the course of.
15 Reflection Methods To Assist College students Retain What You Simply Taught Them
1. Pair-Share
Pair-share is a basic studying technique the place college students are paired, after which verbally ‘share’ one thing that can assist them study new content material, deepen understanding, or evaluation what they already know. It may also be used as a fast and soiled evaluation instrument, because the conversations usually replicate a degree of understanding the instructor can use gauge mastery and plan additional instruction.
2. Sentence Stem-based responses
Sentence stems are nice as a result of they’re like coaching wheels–or to combine a metaphor, instruments to teach college students into pondering and talking in sure patterns. For instance, you may implore college students to ‘assume critically,’ but when they don’t have even the fundamental phrasing of crucial pondering (e.g., ‘That is necessary as a result of…’), crucial pondering will likely be past their attain.
You may as well see our sentence stems for crucial pondering right here for different examples (you don’t have to purchase the supplies to see the samples).
3. Layered Textual content
Layered textual content is one thing I’ve meant to jot down about for years and by no means have. A layered textual content is a digital doc that’s full of hyperlinks that talk, properly, absolutely anything: Questions college students have, alternatives for additional inquiry, odd references and allusions that replicate the schema college students use to make that means, and so forth. (Rap Genius does a model of this.)
By including ‘layers’ of that means to a textual content by means of significant hyperlinking, college students can replicate again on something, from a pre-assessment journal entry that demonstrated their lack of expertise, to a sort of ‘marking up’ of what they discovered when, and from the place.
4. Tweet
140 characters forces college students to replicate fast and to the purpose–nice for temporary bursts of reflection or hesitant writers who would battle to jot down significant journal entries or essays. In truth, you may mix twitter with #6 for twitter exit slips.
5. 3-2-1
3-2-1 is a tried-and-true strategy to body something from a pair-share or journal entry (e.g., ask college students to jot down 3 issues they assume they know, 2 issues they know they don’t know, and one factor they’re sure of a few subject) pre-assessment to a post-assessment (e.g., checklist 3 ways your essay mirrored mastery of ability X, two methods ability Y nonetheless wants enhancing, and a method you can also make your argument stronger within the subsequent 5 minutes) to a mirrored image of the post-assessment.
Learn extra about utilizing the 3-2-1 format for crucial pondering.
6. Exit Slips
Whether or not you name them exit slips or exit tickets, asking college students to briefly depart behind some residue of studying–a thought, a definition, a query–is a strong instructing technique. In truth, ‘exit-slip instructing’ actually drives how I exploit knowledge within the classroom. Asking college students to drop some little bit of reflection of the educational course of on a chair by the door on the best way out is a no brainer.
Some examples?
How did you reply emotionally to one thing you struggled with at the moment? What did you discover most shocking about _____? How did your understanding of _______ change at the moment? What about _____ nonetheless confuses you or makes your curious?
7. Write-Round
I like write-arounds–simple methods for college kids to jot down asynchronously and collaboratively. And the writing fragments college students use don’t must be prose–sure key vocabulary and phrases may also help college students replicate, however most significantly in a write-around, assist college students studying from each other as every scholar is ready to learn different responses earlier than creating theirs.
8. Sketch
Whether or not by sketch-notes or doodles, permitting college students to attract what they assume they know, how they consider their studying has modified, or some sort of metaphorical pathway in direction of deeper understanding is a superb studying technique for college kids that have a tendency in direction of artistic expression, and a non-threatening method for struggling college students to at the least write one thing down on paper you should utilize to gauge perceive and plan your (their) subsequent step.
9. Podcast
Via podcasting as a reflecting technique, college students will speak about their studying whereas recording. If you wish to hold it ‘closed-circuit’ (not printed), or truly push it to a public viewers of some form is determined by the educational and college students and privateness points and so forth.
This may also be merely an audio file recorded and uploaded to a personal YouTube channel that’s shared with academics or mother and father.
10. Brainstorming
Brainstorming will be an efficient reflection technique as a result of it disarms points with different approaches. For hesitant writers, journaling could not work as a result of the writing course of might overwhelm the educational. Podcasting could not work for shy college students, Pair-Share could not work properly if college students are paired successfully, and so forth.
Brainstorming is way less complicated. College students might take an allotted time to jot down down all the things they keep in mind a few subject. Or, they might brainstorm questions they nonetheless have (issues they’re confused or interested by). They may even brainstorm how what what they discovered actually connects with what they already know by creating an idea map.
11. Jigsawing
Jigsawing is a grouping technique the place a job, idea, or one thing ‘bigger’ is damaged down into small puzzles items, and college students in teams analyze the small puzzle piece, then share out to create the puzzle at massive. Utilizing this method for reflection is seamless: Amongst different approaches, you may immediate college students in teams to assemble and share questions they’ve (you can group by readiness/potential, for instance) in teams, after which select one query that they weren’t in a position to reply amongst themselves with the entire class (anonymously–nobody has to know who wrote the query).
12. Prezi
Consider a cross between a sketch, collage, and presentation, and you’ve got a prezi. Partaking–although distracting and overwhelming if the reflection you want is minor–reflection instrument that permits college students to create an artifact of studying for his or her digital portfolios.
13. Vlog
This reflection technique is near ‘Podcasting’ and even has one thing in frequent with pair-sharing. By reflecting by means of vlog’ing, college students merely speak about their studying to a digicam.
This method would achieve success for college kids that love speaking to a digicam, however much less so for others (who, if they’ve to speak in any respect about their studying, could want podcasting–or just recording audio recordsdata which are by no means printed.
14. Collage
You might do a standard collage of studying reflections, however a multimedia collage can be attainable–perhaps a sketchnote with a voiceover recorded as a YouTube video to share as a fast presentation with the category (or absent college students).
15. Journaling
The College of Missouri-St Louis provides 3 sorts of journals that exhibit the totally different prospects of the in any other case vanilla-sounding ‘journaling.’
1. Private Journal – College students will write freely about their expertise. That is normally completed weekly. These private journals could also be submitted periodically to the teacher, or saved as a reference to make use of on the finish of the expertise when placing collectively a tutorial essay reflecting their expertise. (Hatcher 1996)
2. Dialogue Journal – College students submit loose-leaf pages from a dialogue journal bi-weekly (or in any other case at acceptable intervals) for the teacher to learn and touch upon. Whereas labor intensive for the teacher, this may present continuous suggestions to college students and immediate new questions for college kids to contemplate in the course of the semester. (Goldsmith, 1995)
3. Highlighted Journal – Earlier than college students submit the reflective journal, they reread private entries and, utilizing a highlighter, mark sections of the journal that straight relate to ideas mentioned within the textual content or in school. This makes it simpler for the teacher to determine the coed to replicate on their expertise in gentle in fact content material. (Gary Hesser, Augsberg Faculty)
15 Methods For College students To Mirror On Their Studying; picture attribution Flickr consumer woodleywonderworks
