WRITTEN BY ALICE VIGORS
In the classroom there are a range of strategies and routines we can build into the fabric of teaching and learning that support students to apply success criteria related to a learning goal, reflect on their efforts, identify improvements and make adjustments to the 'quality' of their work (NSW Department of Education, 2022).
Explicitly teaching students how to assess their own work, and the work of their peers, promotes student understanding of their learning, and provides opportunities for critical analysis of their own efforts encouraging them to become more autonomous learners. Routines and Strategies for Self-Reflection
As a teacher, it is important that we are intentional in our efforts to build self-reflective learners by fostering an environment and culture that allows students to make connections, to think critically and recognise their where to next. Through laying clear foundations for our students that signals 'this is how we do things here' we are able to foster classrooms that value and make visible the role of feedback and feed forward in the learning process.
There are a range of routines and strategies educators can employ to support learners in this space, including:
Pause Points
A pause point is simply building in moments during the lesson to help students reflect and monitor how their learning is going, as it relates to the learning intention and the associated success criteria. A process that can be short and sharp, and is the perfect way to monitor and refocus students. It also provides a valuable tool for teachers to check and monitor student progress and understanding, allowing teachers to provide assistance where needed and redirect if necessary.
In the classroom... This looks like pausing during a learning task for students to re-examine the success criteria (How am I going?) and identify where they are on track to or have already achieved success and what they will focus on next. Underlining or highlighting evidence will support students to identify achievement of success criteria points. 4 Square Criterion Reflection
Success Criteria Strips
In the classroom ...
Students have the strips on their work or glued into their books where they are able to refer back to and reference the success criteria. Combining this strategy with pause points would assist students to connect the learning task with the criteria and focus efforts on highlighting evidence to support their achievement of the criteria. For younger learners, teachers may include visuals to support students to understand the criteria, such as the hand given in the example to show finger spaces between words is required. 3,2,1 Reflection Routine
Traffice Light Reflection
In the Classroom ... Setting up the routine In my classroom, I display the routine visually so that students understand what the different colour prompts represent when we are self-reflecting on our learning. I don’t deviate from these representations so that over time students can identify the representations without the visual prompt. I ask learners to pause and think about the learning they are currently engaged with or have just undertaken, and ask them to think about which colour representation fits with how they currently feel they are travelling in their learning journey. Choosing a Colour Through this phase, I ask my students to record a coloured circling in the margin of their page to visually represent where they feel they are at with their learning. This is a great observational snapshot and feedback for me as the teacher to pinpoint the students who feel they require more support and further scaffolding. When I conference with students who choose the yellow or red colour code, I add a dot point or two to identify what the focused support will be. This helps me to monitor and keep track of the on-the-go differentiations I make for students to support their learning and longitudinally identify any trends emerging. Coming up in the next episode/post
As we continue our journey to support students self-reflect, monitor and assess their own learning we will take a closer look at how we can use:
Fostering a classroom culture that values and makes visible reflection and feedback is an essential part of developing a classroom the truly invites students into the conversation about
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AuthorHi, I am Alice. I am a primary teacher and leader in New South Wales, Australia. I have been teaching for the past 14 years in both the Public and Catholic school systems. I am passionate about supporting and mentoring colleagues to think deeply about their efforts to cultivate thinking and learning opportunities for students. Read more Archives
August 2023
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