Gifted and Talented Report
By now you will have received your daughter’s report and I hope you have the opportunity to discuss her learning with her teachers in the upcoming parent teacher interviews.
With the new assessment and reporting structures, teachers can give a fuller, and more holistic report on your daughter’s ability and engagement in the day to day.
Emotions may vary among your daughters in their reaction to their report. There will no doubt be great pride amongst some students, but there may also be disappointments. In discussing the report with your daughter, it is worth noting the value in having your daughter reflect on her learning.
John Hattie’s seminal work on visible learning states that “students have potential to speed their own growth” through self-judgment and reflection, giving such introspective practices an effect size of 0.75. (note: anything over 0.70 in effect size is considered optimal)
Conversations at home around your daughter’s learning can help to improve their thinking, retention and metacognistion- i.e thinking about their thinking.
Reflection questions such as:
- What do you remember about what you learned today?
- Of what you remember, what seemed to be the most important ideas?
- Were you an active or a passive learner?
- What was your mindset before, during, and after the lesson?
- How does what you learned relate to what you already knew?
- What was clear and what was confusing and what was somewhere in the middle?
- What do you still ‘need help’ with? Who can you talk to about the lesson to review key ideas or clarify misunderstandings?
- What was most interesting? Least? How can you learn new things if you’re not ‘interested in’ what you are learning? What do others do in these cases to learn?
- What should you do with what you learned and know? What will you be able to do with this new knowledge and skills?
- Where does what you’re learning seem to be ‘heading’?
- How have you been changed by what you’ve learned?
- How do you feel about this content? Interested? Enthusiastic? Curious? Bored? Indifferent?
One of my favourite quotes from philosopher John Dewey is
“We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.”
Perhaps take this approach over the next semester and see how reflection helps in your daughter’s response to learning.
Taken from: https://www.teachthought.com/learning/reflection-questions-for-students/
Mrs Colreavy’s Conundrum Email: rachael.colreavy@syd.catholic.edu.au with your answer and win a prize
