The Excellent 11- Chapter 4- Reflection

Reflection is a very important part of teaching, as well as learning. It's exciting at the end of the year to look back and realize how much you've accomplished since you began. My mother is the cheerleading coach for our local high school, and one thing they do is create scrapbooks for all the senior sports players. It's not just a scrapbook of the previous year, but of their entire high school career. That made me think about creating a class scrapbook every year I teach. Creating it through the year, with the students' help of course, will be so much fun for everyone involved. It will help us remember all the fun activities we did, the field trips we took, and the holiday parties we had. It will also help all of us remember how much we've accomplished throughout the year. I will probably also do what Ron did at the beginning of the year. I'll start the year off with an informal assessment, just to get an idea of different things the students may or may not know. Then at the end of the year, after we have covered all the material, I will give them the assessment again. This will allow them to see just how much they have learned over the course of the year. I think it's also a wonderful idea to have your students write letters to the incoming students about what they should expect and learn, just like in Mrs. Jones' class.