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Less Physics Mo Problems

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Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs.  In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year.  Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home.  I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
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Reflect to Assess to Progress

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Over the weekend, I read Teaching Students to Self-Assess by Starr Sackstein.  It was a fantastic read.  The book focuses on the importance of reflection in the learning progress. This post only provides a few highlights. Her book has great student examples of reflections and discusses tracking progress over time using reflection.  I highly recommend reading and reflecting on what her book sets out.

Why is reflection so important?

  • If we want students to become more independent, life-long learners, they need to understand how they learn.
  • Reflection involves analysis and evaluation which are higher order skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
  • The results of reflection will help students make informed choices about how they personalize learning.
  • The results of student reflections will help instructors modify their instruction to reach all learners.
How does reflection fit into the learning cycle?
The graphic below is one I made last month after reading John Hattie's Learning Made Visible.




I’ve created a new graphic to highlight how reflection fits into the process.







Sackstein does a wonderful job outlining how to build reflection into the classroom over time.










I’ve formatted her guiding questions into the Google Form below.  She is a champion of Google Forms for collecting data.








Once students are ready for narrative reflection, she recommends the following guidelines to be easily accessible in guiding the process.



Ultimately, students are writing reflections for themselves but they could be very informative for others.  So, collecting reflections in a format that can be shared is ultimately the final stage of reflection.  

Essentially, this blog is an attempt to make my reflections public.  Sackstein advocates that teachers model their process for students.  I hope to be able to bring my process into the classroom and make it transparent for students in attempt to show the importance of reflection.
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