by Terry Heick

Reflection is a all-natural element of understanding.

We all consider about new experiences–the tenting on the car ride dwelling, the faults made in a activity, or the thoughts felt when finishing a extended-time period challenge that is taken months to finish.

Below I have shared 15 approaches for students to replicate on their understanding. Modeling the use of every single up entrance can go a extensive way toward building certain you get the high-quality of operate you’d like to see during the year–and learners understand additional in the method.

15 Reflection Methods To Aid College students Keep What You Just Taught Them

1. Pair-Share

Pair-share is a basic understanding system in which pupils are paired, and then verbally ‘share’ something that will aid them find out new articles, deepen comprehension, or review what they now know. It can also be utilised as a fast and soiled assessment tool, as the conversations usually mirror a level of knowledge the trainer can use gauge mastery and approach additional instruction.

2. Sentence Stem-based responses

Sentence stems are great mainly because they are like coaching wheels–or to mix a metaphor, instruments to coach learners into thinking and talking in specific styles. For illustration, you can implore learners to ‘think critically,’ but if they do not have even the primary phrasing of important pondering (e.g., ‘This is important because…’), essential imagining will be outside of their arrive at.

You can also see our sentence stems for critical considering listed here for other illustrations (you really do not have to get the products to see the samples).

3. Layered Text

Layered text is some thing I’ve intended to compose about for several years and never have. A layered textual content is a electronic doc that is stuffed with hyperlinks that converse, very well, just about everything: Issues students have, alternatives for even further inquiry, odd references and allusions that mirror the schema students use to make which means, and so on. (Rap Genius does a variation of this.)

By adding ‘layers’ of this means to a text by significant hyperlinking, pupils can mirror back again on just about anything, from a pre-assessment journal entry that demonstrated their absence of knowing, to a kind of ‘marking up’ of what they uncovered when, and from exactly where.

4. Tweet

140 people forces pupils to reflect swift and to the point–great for quick bursts of reflection or hesitant writers who would struggle to publish significant journal entries or essays. In reality, you can combine twitter with #6 for twitter exit slips.

5. 3-2-1

3-2-1 is a tried using-and-legitimate way to frame nearly anything from a pair-share or journal entry (e.g., ask students to publish 3 things they imagine they know, 2 issues they know they do not know, and 1 factor they’re sure of about a topic) pre-assessment to a put up-assessment (e.g., listing 3 ways your essay reflected mastery of talent X, two means talent Y nevertheless requirements bettering, and 1 way you can make your argument stronger in the up coming five minutes) to a reflection of the publish-evaluation.

Read through more about employing the 3-2-1 format for significant thinking.

6. Exit Slips

No matter if you contact them exit slips or exit tickets, inquiring pupils to briefly depart driving some residue of learning–a imagined, a definition, a question–is a impressive teaching approach. In fact, ‘exit-slip teaching’ actually drives how I use facts in the classroom. Asking learners to drop some bit of reflection of the discovering method on a chair by the doorway on the way out is a no-brainer.

Some examples?

How did you respond emotionally to a little something you struggled with nowadays? What did you come across most shocking about _____? How did your knowing of _______ transform right now? What about _____ even now confuses you or helps make your curious?

7. Write-Close to

I enjoy compose-arounds–easy techniques for pupils to publish asynchronously and collaboratively. And the composing fragments pupils use really don’t have to be prose–certain key vocabulary and phrases can aid pupils reflect, but most importantly in a produce-all-around, aid pupils mastering from one particular another as every single university student is able to read through other responses right before generating theirs.

8. Sketch

Regardless of whether by sketch-notes or doodles, permitting college students to draw what they consider they know, how they believe their learning has altered, or some kind of metaphorical pathway toward further being familiar with is a fantastic finding out system for college students that are likely toward innovative expression, and a non-threatening way for struggling students to at the very least generate some thing down on paper you can use to gauge fully grasp and program your (their) up coming stage.

9. Podcast

By podcasting as a reflecting strategy, pupils will speak about their discovering though recording. If you want to retain it ‘closed-circuit’ (not published), or in fact thrust it to a community audience of some form is dependent on the discovering and learners and privateness problems and so on.

This can also be basically an audio file recorded and uploaded to a private YouTube channel that’s shared with teachers or parents.

10. Brainstorming

Brainstorming can be an efficient reflection tactic because it disarms troubles with other strategies. For hesitant writers, journaling may not perform due to the fact the writing method could overwhelm the studying. Podcasting may possibly not operate for shy students, Pair-Share may possibly not get the job done perfectly if pupils are paired successfully, and so on.

Brainstorming is significantly less complicated. Pupils could take an allotted time to create down every little thing they remember about a matter. Or, they could brainstorm concerns they even now have (matters they’re perplexed or curious about). They could even brainstorm how what what they figured out literally connects with what they by now know by creating a thought map.

11. Jigsawing

Jigsawing is a grouping approach where a process, thought, or some thing ‘larger’ is damaged down into smaller puzzles parts, and college students in teams evaluate the modest puzzle piece, then share out to make the puzzle at substantial. Utilizing this approach for reflection is seamless: Amongst other strategies, you can prompt college students in groups to assemble and share queries they have (you could group by readiness/ability, for illustration) in teams, and then select 1 concern that they weren’t equipped to reply between themselves with the total class (anonymously–no 1 has to know who wrote the problem).

12. Prezi

Believe of a cross in between a sketch, collage, and presentation, and you have a prezi. Engaging–though distracting and too much to handle if the reflection you want is minor–reflection software that makes it possible for students to make an artifact of mastering for their electronic portfolios.

13. Vlog

This reflection method is near to ‘Podcasting’ and even has something in frequent with pair-sharing. By reflecting through vlog’ing, students basically communicate about their understanding to a digital camera.

This solution would be successful for students that really like talking to a digicam, but considerably less so for some others (who, if they have to chat at all about their studying, may perhaps want podcasting–or simply recording audio data files that are never ever printed.

14. Collage

You could do a regular collage of mastering reflections, but a multimedia collage is also possible–maybe a sketchnote with a voiceover recorded as a YouTube online video to share as a fast presentation with the course (or absent learners).

15. Journaling

The University of Missouri-St Louis presents 3 kinds of journals that display the distinct prospects of the normally vanilla-sounding ‘journaling.’

1. Own Journal – Learners will generate freely about their experience. This is commonly finished weekly. These personal journals may be submitted periodically to the teacher, or retained as a reference to use at the stop of the knowledge when placing alongside one another an tutorial essay reflecting their knowledge. (Hatcher 1996)

2. Dialogue Journal – College students submit free-leaf pages from a dialogue journal bi-weekly (or if not at acceptable intervals) for the instructor to go through and remark on. Whilst labor intense for the teacher, this can present continuous opinions to pupils and prompt new queries for students to consider for the duration of the semester. (Goldsmith, 1995)

3. Highlighted Journal – In advance of students submit the reflective journal, they reread personalized entries and, making use of a highlighter, mark sections of the journal that specifically relate to principles talked over in the textual content or in course. This helps make it easier for the teacher to establish the scholar to mirror on their experience in light-weight of course content. (Gary Hesser, Augsberg School)

15 Techniques For Learners To Mirror On Their Discovering image attribution Flickr user woodleywonderworks