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CCE staff and partner reflections on our collaborative work to create schools where learning is engaging and rewarding, and every student is set up for success.
One way that I like to engage learners in reflection is through lateral thinking. It’s a great way to step away from new learning and look at it in a fresh light. One of the new manipulatives I have been using in my work is a set of wooden baby blocks. They are varied, colorful shapes, and some have graphics painted on them. After a group of educators has done quite a lot of new learning, I push them a little further by asking them to take a block and explain how it represents how they are feeling about their new knowledge. Below are some highlights of the reflections shared by educators from my work this past fall in Quality Performance Assessment.
Don’t have blocks? No problem; there are other ways to engage learners in this kind of thinking. If I’m in a library, I ask learners to find a book title that is their answer to a reflective question. I’ve used old postcards with interesting pictures, art work on the walls, random pages in books and I even use store flyers on their way to the recycle bin. This type of thinking is fun, gets learners to reflect differently, and helps a facilitator guide learners to the next steps on their performance assessment journey.