A time to refect...

Throughout term one I encouraged student reflection using a range of approaches.  Some examples are reflection dice, socrative quick questions and the exit ticktets, learning conferences with my students, posing reflective questions during group work, think alouds etc.

However I felt that is was starting to become slightly monotonous.  More of a chore than an active state of critical thinking to improve learning outcomes. So what did I do?  I switched it up and turned to my new buddy Screencastify (sometimes pronounced Screencastifly - so cute!).  However, I didn't come up with this idea by myself.  It was one of my students who had decided to record himself reflecting on the self-assessment of his writing.  He said it 'helped him to feel good and that it would be evidence for Miss Fortes if she doesn't think that he has self-asssessed because some people just make it colourful and pretty but don't know why'

Cue in Screencastify.  We have started using screencastify to assist us as a reflective tool where they would record themselves reflecting on a particular task and paste it into their document.  This allowed them to revisit their reflections, gave me an insight to what they understood and still found tricky as well as helping others who weren't sure what to do.

Prior to recording their ideas the student's were asked to write their reflections.  The differentiated aspect to this task was that my students who struggled to type their ideas were only required to record them orally.  Yes to some 'typing and recording orally' may seem pointless, a double up and a waste of time. However writing their reflections helped them keep track of what they were saying.  As some students read out their reflections their auto response was to explain some vague points they had identified only from reading it aloud.  Boom!  Reflecting on learning whilst reflecting in the moment.

Here is a snippet of how it looked in a document.