“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein
How can we better teach students to understand their own learning?
Earlier in the month, I put together this post on reflection and refraction: or my thoughts on the need to make sure our networks are part of the reflective practice. Incidentally, just this week, a group of teachers and I tapped into the collective wisdom of Madeleine Brookes as she toured us through her thoughts on connectivism and blogging (do read her post here). Then, just this morning I listened to one of my favorite pop-culture podcasts (The Slate Spoiler Series), as they ran through the various theories and reactions to the film Mother!, if you have seen the film, I think you’ll enjoy it too (click here). I mention all of this, because I think mixed together, they speak to a need to diversify perspective when reflecting. In order to make reflection serve the dual purpose of engaging learners with their own learning AND developing networks that foster critical thinking, reflective activities have to hook our imaginations.
Protocols for reflection should be adaptive.
One thing that I love doing as an educator is crafting questions. It is something I have invested a lot of time in, and it is the reason I am obsessed with podcasts. Listening to interviews, eavesdropping on professional critics has much to teach us about question-design. Anyone who listens to Desert Island Discs knows there is a craft to drawing out better answers. Dana Stevens, film critic, and podcaster is my yoda when it comes to provoking her co-hosts to dig deeper into their responses, you can hear her here. Perhaps the #1 take away I have from years of listening to Stevens is this: don’t let opinions float, and don’t let people ‘off easy,’ great conversations are often the result of great challenges.
How can we ‘be more Dana’ in the classroom?
- If your students are blogging about a learning experience, partner them up with a reader who will ask five why’s in response—engender provocation within the portfolios.
- Use metaphors. Ask your students to rethink their course, that lesson, a project, an experience as a sport. Huh? I walk through that in detail here.
- Use the WOOP method to encourage students to take ownership within their own learning structures. You can enjoy a long-listen about the theory here (see another podcast!), or take the WOOP challenge and watch this 5-minute tutorial, or check out the WOOP app. The process of identifying and acknowledging the internal obstacle is huge.
- Remember that a small change can have a big payoff: Ask this question: If you had just 30 more minutes to revise/plan for that project/event before it launched, what should you have done with those 30 minutes and why?
- In small teams, take turns building journey and empathy maps.
- Hit the whiteboards and draft out your force field analysis.
- Encourage students to be flexible in their reflection–when they are thinking critically about what happened and why, encourage them to return to earlier posts/statements with this question: “Why might the exact opposite also be true?”
- Get out the timer, and quickly offer up snapshots of your learning, Nicki Hambleton explains the process here.
What’s your favorite way to engage with reflection?
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