Friday, January 12th | The Reflective Process

It has been an inspiring week of Exhibitions of Learning. Thank you for sharing your projects, and for the thoughtful audience engagement. There was a wide range of projects,  showing different levels of expertise, connectivity, and innovation.

GATHERING: Headlines - Write a headline to summarize the events of the last week as if they were on the front page of a newspaper. (Include an action verb!) Share the headline as if you were trying to sell the newspaper on the street corner....shout it out!


CONSIDER EXHIBITIONS OF LEARNING AS AN EVENT: As a group, provide feedback to inform future Exhibitions of Learning. We did this informally on Wednesday, but we would like you to think about how we can improve the experience for the spring.


  • Keep - Create a list of characteristics about the EoL event that you believe should be kept the same in future events. 


  • Change - Create a list of suggested changes for future events. Be specific and provide rationale for how you feel the change will improve the experience.
  • Support - Create a list of areas where students need more support, in order to make the EoL event more successful. Describe what that support might look like. 
*Document the Keep, Change, Support for the planning team to consider. Share with Kimberly, Zoe, and Jackson.

FEEDBACK - If feedback forms are available, they will be distributed and reviewed. Students should read their own feedback and annotate with three different colors (highlighters work well for this). 

  • Use one color to highlight areas of the feedback that you CONNECT or agree with.
  • Use another color to highlight areas that EXTEND your thinking about your project or yourself.
  • Use a third color to highlight areas of feedback that CHALLENGE your thinking about your project.
  • Write your own notes on the feedback forms, so that you can use specific evidence in your written reflection or conference with your project block advisor next week. 

REFLECT - If feedback forms are not available or there is time remaining, students should silently reflect on the following in their Process Journals. It is not necessary to create a written or formal response to every question, but students should organize their thoughts and prepare evidence from the process journal and project.


↑ Intent: Thinking about initial thoughts, questions, expectations.
  • What topic did you study during Project Block this semester? Why did you choose this topic?
  • What were your initial thoughts about the topic?
  • What were your initial expectations?

← Process: Thinking of what happened in the research phase.
  • What research did you do? What new information did you encounter because of this research? 
  • What did you learn about your topic that you did not know before this semester? 
  • How did your views of the topic change based on your research?
  • How were your views of the topic affirmed based on your research?

← Product: Thinking of what happened when everything came together.
  • What did you create? Why did you choose this type of creation?
  • What decisions did you have to make before you began this process?
  • What decisions did you have to make during the creation phase?
  • How does your creation represent your topic? What you learned during the creation phase?
  • What is the strongest part of your creation? Why?
  • What is the weakest part of your creation? Why? How could you change this portion of the creation? 
  • What would you do differently if you could redo the creation phase? Explain.
  • How did you collaborate with others in this stage of the project journey? What did you learn by working with other individuals?

→ Intent: Thinking of future learning.
  • What would you keep, repeat, change in your project?
  • How did you prepare for your exhibition? How could you better prepare for exhibition in the future?
  • Was your exhibition successful? Why or why not.
  • If you could change one aspect of your exhibition, what would it be and why?
  • How did you collaborate with others in this stage of the project journey? What did you learn by working with other individuals?
  • What were your successes this semester? Why were these successes? 
  • What were your obstacles? How did you overcome these obstacles?
  • What new skills did you obtain this semester? How did you obtain those skills?
  • What skills can you use next semester, in other classes, in the future?
.....

NEXT WEEK
- Advisors will communicate their expectations for individual reflections on this semester. 
- Students who did not complete their Exhibition of Learning and would like an opportunity to do so, will need to schedule that with their Project Advisor and make sure that it takes place before Thursday.
- The final week of the semester. All evidence is due on Friday, January 19th. No evidence will be accepted after that.

WEEK of JANUARY 22nd
- Students will experience some creative play and a micro-project within a discipline of their choice
- Students who already have project ideas and students with year-long projects, will have an opportunity to pitch that project idea -- >  What? How? Why?
- Juniors will learn more about the ACT during project block time