Learning Plan Revision 2

  Today is indeed Moving Day.  It's been enjoyable to continue collaborating with colleagues, reading and meeting with students.  It's been easy to create reflection blog posts and think big.  So it's time to move on for sure, with the destination of the Action Plan in mind.  Moving isn't easy, but it's all about modeling the risks we hope that our own students will take so here goes...

  Research Question:  Does student reflection on goal setting improve with the use of structured digital tools and intentional instruction on evidence collection and reflection language?

  See the screen of my revised learning plan below for the abstract and follow this link for the post that will house my Action Plan.  The screen shot only has the most recent changes and the addition of the title and abstract.

   I think the parts of my day that had the greatest impact on my decision to pose the above abstract was meeting with another group of students and my interview with Mark from Tarrant.  I know that I wanted to build upon my work with goal setting from last year and move further into working on student reflection.  The conversations with students and seeing their PLP work really helped me understand that digital collection tools are an excellent way of showcasing and cataloging student work and thinking.  They allow for personal creativity, style and content.  I also learned that without intentional instruction on how to collect quality evidence, the time to do it, and allowing for the creativity and individual choices of students, buy in and interest in the PLP process will suffer.  That has led me towards the idea of structured use of digital tools and intentional instruction and scheduling of PLP work.
   The second part of my day that had a great impact was meeting for an interview with Mark from Tarrant about my previous work with goal setting and reflection.  It was good to reflect!  His questions helped me see the parts of what I did last year that worked well and how my approach changed over the year to goal setting.  I realized that reflection work was not nearly as intentional as my work with goal setting.  That further pushed me towards this idea of reflection work.  I realized that through this conversation I had learned to listen to the children and work with their ideas.  Be a guide, not the one pushing down ideas upon them.  I need to take that approach to this reflection work, allowing students to follow their own path and process.  They DO need intentional instruction and tools though.
   So my biggest Ah-Ha from the week so far comes from a combination of work and conversations.  Perhaps Don summed it up best after he was listening to me talk with students about their PLPs - Listen to your students!  If we listen to them, then we can start to understand their needs.  We can start to understand their interests.  We can start to understand their process and how they can become excited and invested.