It's so easy to just keep the train moving during the school year. I often have a bad habit of ending a unit and moving right into the next thing. There's so much I want to do, and so little time. But if I really want students to become better, more independent, learners, I need to be giving them time to reflect on their learning.
We're about 1/2 way through the Genius Hour Project (wow!), so yesterday after their test, I took the time for them to reflect on what they learned in our unit and what they've learned so far from the process of 20 Time. I used Todays Meet and Padlet to have students share their "take aways" from our unit, then we shifted to 20 time. One class was really small, so we just had a round table discussion about updates in their process and issues they were having. My other class, which is a little bigger, had the same discussion in smaller groups, and then I asked them to reflect on their process so far on Today's Meet.
I LOVE the comments up above from that question (despite the typos), and I wish I had done it in my other class. For me, it validates why I'm doing this. In my post Start With Why, I explained how I wanted students to foster a love for learning, go deeper with learning, and develop critical skills such as analysis, synthesis, time/project management, creativity, and more. Well, based on just those comments, I feel like we're making progress towards those goals. They're getting better at the process.
Process over Product.
I keep going back to this phrase over and over again this year. It comes up in our staff collaboration discussions. I see it on Twitter. I see in the circle of those discussing genius hour. I go back to it when I think about what I want my students to be able to do. The reality is, they can't get to a meaningful, accurate, and appropriate product (whatever that may be), if they're not good at the process. What's more, if they're good at the process, the product will come, and it will probably be good.
What kinds of processes are important? Here's some just off the top of my head. You can see many of my goals of this project are process oriented goals.
- Inquiry
- Time/task management
- Credible Information gathering
- Conflict resolution
- Problem resolutions
- Learning from failures
- Modifying goals based on changing information
What have I learned about the process?
- I've learned it's worth the process!
- While it may feel a little uncomfortable to release control, students really benefit from having more control of their learning.
- Periodic reflection is key. I wouldn't have realized where they were in this process if I hadn't checked in with them, and they might not have either if they weren't prompted.
- I really like the blogging process. I think it builds in a great platform for student reflection, and collaboration. I'm already thinking of how I'll be implementing this in my biology classes next year.
