One of the hardest things to do for students is to reflect – truly reflect – on their learning or on a topic. One of the hardest things to do for teachers is to teach students how to reflect.
The problem is that reflecting can be done in many different ways. People can reflect on topics, on strategies, on things they found interesting or things they found confusing. People can consider reasons something went well or badly and can explore changes to make for the future.
I tell my students that reflecting is looking back to move forward. It is a form of metacognitive thinking, which is a fancy way of saying “thinking about thinking.” When you reflect, you consider your learning (how you learned, why your strategies were effective or not) and what that means for future learning, or learning in a different subject. For example, perhaps you notice that you understand things better in class after having had a chance to discuss it with your group. How could you use that knowledge to improve your understanding in all of your subjects? What would you need to do?
Or maybe you find that when you have “group discussions,” you quickly get off track and think of random observations from your life or YouTube. What are some ways that you could keep yourself focused? Why do you think those strategies might work? How will you implement them?