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I wrote my action plan after our first face 2 face session. My “How Might We” question is about reflection: How might we improve student engagement and metacognition through personal reflection?
Looking back on it now, I’m REFLECTING that my goals on my action plan might have been a bit too ambitious considering the time of year (report cards and the holiday season definitely slowed me down).
Although I have been slowly implementing some of the changes I set out to in December and January, I’m not quite as far as I would have hoped. To improve the accountability for reflection and promote metacognition in reading, I have implemented a log that my students keep in their reading notebooks (see template below). When I meet with my students for conferences during Reading Workshop, I use this to document our conversations.
I have found this successful in making it clear to students what they are doing well and involving them in the process of developing next steps. It’s also nice to have a record as opposed to doing it all orally so they can track their progress. I’m still working towards increasing reflection for math. For the rest of January, I want to work on getting a reflection section set up on our math tests and more reflection via Seesaw for math.
One idea I got from someone in Cohort 21 was to involve parents in the reflection process. This is something I also want to continue to work towards. Maybe I’ll be more realistic this time around and say that is a goal for February…or March!
@hprosser you are exactly where you need to be. This action plan process is designed to be a year long because WE KNOW December in independent schools is crazy. You are right on track. You will want to connect with @ashaikh and @adamcaplan as well as read these posts
https://cohort21.com/kirstenshier/2018/01/14/student-documentation-using-seesaw/
https://cohort21.com/kirstenshier/2017/11/13/on-my-way-student-self-assessment-and-digital-portfolios/
At the next F2F mine the room for teachers already using SeeSaw to capture reflection. There are many in the cohort already using it.
You are right on track!
J
Great work Hilary! I echo what Justin has said in the above, and add @jgravel to this list because – despite the difference in age and grade – you are exploring the same concepts and might be able to add ideas to one another’s action plans.
My only suggestion here is that you choose one area to focus on, learn from that, and then slowly extend this into other areas. In this way, students can learn and gain mastery in one area before being asked to do it elsewhere. This might also help you create something more sustainable throughout the year and into next year.
See you soon!
Garth.
Don’t beat yourself up @hprosser – you are doing great work! There’s nothing wrong with having a long list of to do’s and not getting to all of them – it just means you have lots of great ideas. Shift some of them to the next term, or even next year. Keep building on what you’re doing, a little bit at a time, and you’ll soon find your goals are being achieved.
What has been the student response to the written feedback on reading conferences? Are you finding that they are doing anything with it?
They have been very receptive to it so far! We do the same routine for writing, so it wasn’t anything too unfamiliar for them. I just found a lot of the feedback I give in reading is oral and I wanted my students to have a record of it somewhere in hopes that it would lead them to actively reflect and internalize the feedback. What I’m finding more and more with my students is that they are very self aware. They know their strengths and areas for improvement. However, getting them to actively work on those areas of need or take those next steps is the challenge. It’s too early to tell if the log has made a differences for reading as we just started using it, but hopefully by making the feedback visible and requiring my students to reflect, it will help them take those next action steps. Fingers crossed!
@hprosser I too set very lofty goals for December. I achieved connecting with one school rather than 4 but it was a meaningful connection and one that I hope will be ongoing.
Love the idea of encouraging students to identify the next step. Often the feedback goes well and conferencing does too, then the next step doesn’t happen.
Looking forward to reading about the next step (s).