Genius Hour 20 Day Challenge - Day 6: Reflection Practice

Day 6: Reflection Practice

Reflecting about the process and being metacognitive is an important part of the process. From the beginning of the year, I had students blogging and reflecting about their learning and their classroom behavior. This really helped them be more thorough in their Genius Hour reflections. Go to Lauren's Teachers Pay Teachers store to download this FREEBIE. 

You could also go to Kristin's TpT store to get this FREEBIE of Self-Reflection Starters.

If reflecting isn't a regular part of your day, at this point we recommend getting your students to start reflecting about the Genius Hour process. Don't expect in-depth, eye-opening, life changing realizations the first few reflection experiences. Many of the reflections at first was a lot like one of my favorite Bachelor contestant's response.

If you use a class blog like Weebly, KidBlog, or Edmodo, provide students with prompts such as: 

• What was a challenge you faced today? How did you get through it?
• What was something easy or enjoyable today? Why? 
• What do you like or dislike about this step of Genius Hour? 

Keep the prompts fairly open-ended. If you feel that students aren't sharing enough, reply back with a follow up question.

Lauren here! Here are some examples of ways I incorporated reflection into my 4th grade classroom.

I had students revise their writing and reflect on the process.

Here's a reflection from a social studies primary source lesson.

At the end of the year, I had students share their plan for completing an at home volcano project, and then reflect on the process.