Learning Blog #4! REFLECTION!

Finally, the R in PAR!  Reflection, finally the time to see what our students have learned.

Reflective Thinking is something that educators love to use on their students, for one it helps students retain material they have read, the more they reflect and think about it, the longer they will remember the information, also, reflection provides a demonstration f one's learning through a system of informal evaluation, which teachers can use to assess what students did and did not comprehend.

Communication Skills: Students MUST learn to communicate effectively before they are going to think and reflect after they read.  Especially if they want to use reflective learning, you cannot do that without having some type of communication skills.

Critical Thinking: Is a very tough point to consistently teach to students, it requires a lot of maturity, knowledge, effort, and a willingness to change misconceptions about a topic.  If teachers do not CONSTANTLY challenge their students and make them think critically then they will lose the skill very quickly.

I absolutely LOVE cooperative learning AND group work, although they are a little different.  Cooperative learning is a predicted idea that small groups of students will work together to accomplish shared goals, and that each group member accepts responsibility for helping fellow group members learn.  I think this gives students plenty of time to work on socialization and communication skills that are important to reflective thinking, and also makes the work fun for the students.  Instead of a student becoming frustrated over not finding an answer, they can have a student show them another resource or way to find the answer, and help each other out.

Post graphic organizers are great for students who need and like visuals to help them learn, it is also a good study tool and a clear cut way to organize material learned.

Making connections, double-entry journals, rally tables, are all ways educators use to have students' stimulate their minds, make connections between things they read, to things they know with their prior knowledge.

Paired reading and TPS is something I have even used in college, it is a good way to share ideas with other people who share an interest in your profession, because you can send each other ideas and prospectives the other person may not have heard of, or tried before and it may turn out to be beneficial to your situation.

As many people feel, this chapter was like beating a dead horse, but it was a very good refresher or reflective strategies, and also a very well written and clear cut chapter.  Reflecting is all about using good communication skills to work towards making students autonomous learners, and getting them to connect readings to real life, other readings, and connections in general.


Double Entry Post!! Meaning Making
---I think that reflection is very important, because for students to REALLY understand the material, they should be able to reflect back, and make CONNECTIONS to their life, or a previous lesson.  Growing up, I was the main student saying, "I'll never need this, why do I have to learn about fractions?"....the truth is..you may or may not ever use it again, but as an educator you have to convince the student it is important, and be sure to give real life examples of when they can use the learned material, because I strongly feel that the more the student can connect and reflect on a lesson, the better they truly understand and will remember it.