Monday, August 11, 2014

Lights Academy: Reflection Activity

Today is an exciting day for me as a professional for this evening we have our kickoff/orientation for Lights Academy, an internal, accelerated, personalized learning program within Lutheran High School. You will be reading much more about Lights Academy in this blog throughout the year as I share various activities, success, and challenges that we encounter.

I have come to the conclusion that in our classrooms we tend to shortchange reflective activities. In the rush to push through content we often feel we fall behind and need to press on toward the next topic or unit. That is a shame since educational research highlights the value of reflection as a tool for greater learning.

Reflection is a core activity in Lights Academy. Here is one example of how reflection takes place. In Lights Academy we have a speaker's series set up for this year. In addition, students will create online portfolios to showcase their work and thoughts. This activity leverages these two experiences:

For each speaker we have for Lights Academy a reflection will be added to your digital portfolio by the next class period. Included with each reflection should be the following:
  • Who spoke, and the credentials of this person
  • Key points, concepts, and ideas shared by the speaker
  • Short reflection — What have I learned? What can I apply to my life and work?
This is a simple activity and far from creative. Yet we seek to be very intentional in prompting students about reflection.

What are some of your favorite reflective activities? Feel free to share them as a comment to this post so that we may all learn, grow, and share together.

1 comment:

  1. Video is such a great reflective tool! I suggest this all the time, as I did it for several years for a professional portfolio, and always learned a great deal about my own practice, making changes to improve regularly along the way!

    ReplyDelete