My blog post last month compared teaching to a Nascar race and reflection to the caution flag and yellow light pit stops where the race becomes more about strategy than just outright skill. My first few years as a teacher (and if I am being 100% honest, an ongoing struggle after 13 years in the classroom) I would find lots of methods and opportunities to reflect, but not much would change based on that reflection or feedback. It's like the kids would come to pit road and say "the left tire feels a little loose" and I would send them back out on track without an adjustment or a new tire or a new game plan of any sorts. I'd wave as they passed through pit road and yell "NICE JOB OUT THERE!" but then do nothing with the new data I had received. In hindsight, and with a few more years of experience under my belt, I can see that this type of reflection does nothing for me or my learners.
In fact, it might be more detrimental than if I had just not asked them to reflect in the first place. They leave the reflection experience feeling like I don't listen to them or like I don't care or appreciate their words and their feedback. They feel as though reflection is just one more hoop I MAKE them jump through that has no real meaning. Slowly over time the entire process of reflection and collecting feedback from the learners becomes pointless and the kids treat it as such.
So, the question isn't just when do I reflect or how do I reflect, but WHAT DO I DO WITH IT?
I ask my learners to write reflections after every essay we complete in class, and they keep them in a Google Doc titled Essay Reflections which works pretty much like an old fashioned writing portfolio. They keep a photographic copy and written reflection of every piece of writing they complete for me. This is something that is mostly for them, but it can be helpful in writing conferences, especially with kids who are struggling. I ask my learners to provide feedback and reflective input after every unit. Sometimes I include questions about the assignment itself which I use later to help me make changes to instructions, rubric, scaffolding, or just to realize they all hate it and I should probably come up with a new assessment altogether (don't you hate it when that happens). But more often the questions I ask consist of things like this:
1. How confident do you feel in your ability to ________? (fill in the blank with a skill like rhetorical analysis)
2. What is one thing that increased your confidence and/or abilities in this skill during the last unit? It is ok if you say nothing.
3. What is one thing you feel you need additional practice with regarding the previous unit? (I usually provide a list of suggestions, in case they aren't really sure...writing a purpose statement, embedding quotes, etc)
4. What is something you need from ME in order to increase your confidence and abilities?
5. If you could design the next activity and/or assessment for this skill, what would it look like?
I collect this data in different ways and at different points from October through January checking and monitoring progress as I go. I keep my eye out for patterns where every kid is saying the same thing or the same kid is saying the same thing every time. I try my best to make small adjustments to my teaching as I go. You know, change the tire when it needs changing, etc.
Sometime near the end of the first semester (usually the week before exams), I ask my kids to write reflections on ALL of the skills we have covered so far; usually this consists of rhetorical analysis, argumentation, and some research/synthesis skills. I take a few days and spread it out so that it doesn't get too boring, but I pick their brains about everything I can think of. Then, I spend the next two-three weeks designing the first unit of study for the new semester. This is 100% based on their feedback. Not what I THINK they need, but what they actually said. It looks a little something like this when it is done: a chart of possible activities to choose from all created from their ideas.
This is the template the kids complete where they CHOOSE the assignments they want to complete. They make this decision based on the style evaluation and reflection they had completed previously where they were asked to create goals for themselves (this evaluation and reflection is activity one of the new semester, just to get them refreshed and thinking about themselves as writers). Based on those goals, they will choose the activities to complete. When they have chosen their activities, they will complete the review materials (parts 1 and 2) and the assigned activities (parts 3 and 4). All of the activities from the chart are inside my iTunesU course, but here is a sample.
After completing 2 choice activities, the kids are asked to write a NEW essay spending extra care with the topics they have been working with. Their final essay is scored like an AP essay with a few "bonus points" on the rubric for doing a "better than usual" job in their chosen area. So every kid has a section on the rubric which is customized to his/her own needs and wants.
The first year I took this more intentional approach to using their feedback, I thought I was going to cry. It was hard. I had to come up with 16 activities from scratch. Once I got over the prep work, it was SOOO worth it. At the end of this activity, I had kids tell me I was the first teacher EVER who actually read their feedback and gave them what they needed. The end of unit debrief was full of "Now I understands" instead of "I am still losts." I couldn't have been happier with the results. The best news is that when I did this again a little later in the year as a an AP review and again the next year with a new crop of kiddos, I didn't have to start from scratch. Several of the topics were still relevant and could be tweaked an reused. The one time investment, really paid off for me.
