Learning through Reflection

True learning takes place when students have a chance to reflect on what they have read or the assignment.  Reflection is the third stage of PAR.  Reflection helps a student comprehend beyond the literal level.  Teachers usually have to help students develop this skill because it does not develop naturally for most students.    Reflection helps students become autonomous learners.  Autonomours learners are self-regulated.  Students can strengthen this skill by comprehension monitoring.  Comprehension monitoring is a way to keep a mental track of one's own learning. 

There are three important skills to emphasize during reflection.  These are communication skills, critical thinking, and critical literacy.

                           Steps to Problem Solving/ Critical Thinking
                 
                         1.  Gather ideas and information
                         2.  Define the problem
                         3.  Form tentative conclusions
                         4.  Test conclusions
                         5.  Make a decision

Teachers need to teach this process to help their students develop critical thinking skills.  Teachers can help students with this process through the use of activities such as study guides and group-and-label techniques. 

What is critical literacy?  It is analytical reading.  Using primary sources can be a great tool to use to teach this skill.  Students should question the author's reason for writing and their stance on a particular topic.  This helps the student become an informed reader. 

Cooperative learning is important  to refelective learning.  Students can learn from one another and pose different view points.  Cooperative learning is different from group work.  Rules need to be established before hand and each member needs to be active in the learning.  Cooperative learning is effective because the strategies fall into one of the following categories of learning strategies:

1. Rehearsal strategies
2. Elaboration strategies
3. Organizational strategies
4. Comprehension-monitoring stategies
5. Affective strategies

There are three phases of cooperative learning.  They are individual phases, group work, and teacher-led discussion.  Students can use brainstorming and post-graphic organizers to assist in reflective reading.  Teachers can help students make connections by using double-entry journals, a rallytable, paired reading, three-step interview, reflective guides, think-alouds, etc.  I found the rallytable to be interesting and never had used it before, never as a student or teacher.  For a rallytable, an open-ended question is asked of the students.  The students pair up and pass a paper back and forth.  Each time the student gets the paper, they write an answer until the teacher says times up.  Then the teams share their answers and compare them to the other groups.  Teams can actually use their answers to create graphic organizers to catergorize their answers.  Then it becomes like a double reflective idea.

Has anyone else ever used the rallytable?  What was your experience like?

Source:

Richardson, J. S., Morgan, R. F., & Fleener, C. 2012. Reading to learn in the content areas. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co