Sunday, June 1, 2014

Students' partnership in learning!

As teachers we all look for partnership to grow professionally with colleagues and connecting with professionals on social media. I have always appreciated many blogs and tweets that make me reflect on many pedagogical learning experiences.

As mentioned in several posts on voice, inquiry and the ownership of learning, all credits are given to students for their partnership in learning. I was reading Aviva Dunsinger's post on Celebrating Learning  addressing students showcasing their work and how students are amazing teachers when given the choice. In recognition of #AboutThekids and catching up to my reflective blogging this post is dedicated to my teachers of Grade 6 and Grade 5/6 who make me celebrate and reflect on a daily basis.

I am sharing an example that took place with the whole school where students were to lead learning. The reason I am sharing this learning activity  is to demonstrate that every opportunity in class or out of class should always be  reflected on with students, by focusing on learning skills and how learning skills are always applied to any situations.

Students had an opportunity for a day mentoring the primary students through Math activities organized by Mathletes.  As students were mentoring, I had them reflect on their experiences on the classroom Twitter account. I have gathered their responses and videos of the day on a padlet. I am unable to share the live link as the videos are of many students from all grades.




   


All students' reflective tweets during the Math stations are the exact reflections that makes a classroom a learning space. 

The tweets were about:
  •  The importance of collaboration when teaching and learning
  •   Positive feedback during activities
  •  Motivating students by giving them a hint or a question to provoke their thinking.
  •  Learning the Math content with the other students while teaching and explaining
  •  Learning is fun when students are talking
  •   Lots of fun when students were engaged with learning
  •  Students listened and persevered when they were challenged
  •  Students were accountable at completing their tasks and never gave up
  •  Learning through games is motivating.


 Students' reflection mirrored what happens in the classroom and how important to always take advantage of all learning situations and reflect to improve learning skills. I enjoy watching students every year take full ownership and responsibility of learning and perseverance to inquire for learning and share their learning. Teachers who regularly visit my classroom or see my students in action at school or out of school wonder, how do we do it! It is about reflective learning on a daily basis by focusing on learning skills and actions taken to master tasks through skills.  


        


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the mention, Rola, and for sharing such a great blog post! I think that this reflection piece is key. I've noticed it with my students this year as well, and it's definitely such an important part of inquiry. How would you suggest that teachers get started with reflective learning by students? How can we assist all students with being successful at this self-reflection? I've found that I need to continue to modify how I get students to reflect (from podcasts to written reflections) to meet all student needs, and some students still require scaffolding with more specific questions. What do you find?

    Thanks!
    Aviva

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  2. I focused this year on daily reflective learning and students became accountable by sharing on a daily basis. I give them opportunities to reflect and set daily learning goals as a community. I mentioned the process in one of today's post http://learninginprogess.blogspot.ca/. I start focusing on reflective skills from day one of the school year and we co-construct a criteria on the how and the why. I turn the responsibility to them. We are lagging behind in our daily classroom blogging as the time is used to update portfolios and speak to their learning. We do also use audios reflections during learning tasks based on co-constructed criteria that students also post on eportfolios. It is a process that takes time and follow up as it is part of their assessment for and as learning.

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