| This topic has been a major priority for me this year as I institute what I believe is a 21st Century fifth grade classroom. This is the process I take my kids through: 1st Trimester: I have my kids experience learning through my normal teaching and learning methods. Once I feel that the Big Idea or Enduring Understanding is learned, we reflect on it by creating a blog post about it. The first couple blog posts by the students are not all that strong because I just tell them to explain what was hard or easy, what new learning they made, etc. It is fairly general and they get to choose the best way to reflect. Then, I teach them how to reflect. Here is the lesson on reflection that I created. Once we've learned how to reflect, the blog posts start to get stronger. It is around this time that I realized the importance of providing my students enough time to get these reflections completed. When they are not provided enough time, the reflections are short and shallow. Just before report cards are sent home, students work in table groups to read through the list of 34 21st Century skills that we are focusing on this year. It is a very complicated list of skills that 5th grade students cannot understand any earlier than this time. Thankfully, my students put in a tremendous effort to read through these and understand them. They used iPads and computers to look up things they didn't understand. Here are pictures from that lesson. After we understood each section of the 21st Century skills document, students assessed themselves and gave themselves a score from 1 to 10 (but I don't allow 9's or 10's during 1st trimester - they have to aspire to those later in the year). Here is the skills document and self-assessment that we use. This document has become a huge inspiration for us this year and last. Students try hard to improve their scores on it, and I use it to share progress with parents as well. Here is my blog post on 21st Century Assessment. Next, students create five goals for themselves that they will work on over the next trimester. These goals can be to improve a 21st Century skill, print neater, remember capitals and periods, etc. They get to choose. I tell them that they can choose three of them if they'd like, and I will choose the other two, or they choose all five themselves. I will have to post this document at a later time (I think it's on a classroom hard drive). 2nd Trimester: Students are given a copy of their goal sheets and asked to tape it to the inside of their desk lids. This way, they will be gently reminded of their goals. In order to make improvement in your goals, I have to agree with your progress, otherwise these goals carry over as we create five new goals for the next trimester. Any goals that carry over come with strict routines or direct instruction lessons in order to help you achieve your goal. In regards to reflection, I start to give my students more direction during the second trimester in order to improve their writing, their thinking, and their to make everything more visible. I give them specific questions to answer in their blog entries that cause them to reflect, synthesize, and show that they understand the big idea or enduring understanding. I also associate a badge with every blog entry that is done correctly. Every few weeks, I check to see if students have earned any new badges, I then issue them, and the students get to feel rewarded for their efforts. Students also get small perks for earning blog badges within our social studies simulations, adding external motivation for those who need it. Here is our list of blog badges and the reflection questions and enduring understanding questions that I have written. Here is the form where students submit their request to earn a blog badge. Trimester 3: Everything is practiced and improved! Goals are focused on, and badges are earned. We celebrate at the end of the year all of our progress and appreciate the process we undertook. :) | 1st Trimester Blog Reflections: (Click on them to make them bigger!)   2nd Trimester Blog Reflections:    |
3rd Trimester Blog Reflections:
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