Organizing a Learning Reflection Process

With my English 9 course standards and learning targets decided, I next turned to figuring out how to possibly organize a data collection system that focused on feedback and reflection rather than points. Some of my most recent thinking can be attributed to Sarah Zerwin (@SarahMZerwin) and her book Pointless: An English Teacher's Guide to More Meaningful Grading. In the past, I had developed work logs where students could record their reading, journal, and copy the day’s learning target. Last spring, before going virtual, students were tracking their online vocabulary program progress and gathering evidence of their writing style in two additional Google Docs. I wanted to keep many of these organizational options, but I also wanted to ensure that I didn’t have students needing to always open so many documents.

WEEKLY LEARNING GUIDES

Last spring, for my Honors English 9 class, I created a Google Doc for our two units we explored while at home. For my Academic English 10 class, I created a weekly Google Doc. These documents included a Gotta-Do List (with a brief explanation of each task, its deadline, hyperlink to the page in the same Doc, and a space for students to check their completion of each task) and then a series of pages with links to instructional videos or other content and space to complete assignments.

I decided that these weekly learning guides will house the following this school year:

• Gotta-Do List
• Instructional videos and materials
• Assignments with description of A-level work (Look-Fors)
• Reading and Writing Journal
• Vocabulary progress (we use Membean)
• Weekly reflections on learning targets

This now gives each week a more self-contained feel, but how can students still get a big picture of their learning progress?

STUDENT LEARNING PORTAL

I used to call this document a Student Work Log, but since it will now house references, major hyperlinks, and grade pitches, I felt “portal” was more appropriate. The goal with this document is to include hyperlinks to each week’s Weekly Learning Goals and provide a space to track weekly reflections on learning.

The sections in this document are as follows:

• Work Habits
• Learning Standards and Targets
• My To-Read List
• Books I’ve Read this Semester
• Additional Links
• Weekly and Quarterly Reflections

You can find a read-only copy of the Learning Portal here, but below is a brief description of my rationale and intent.

·       Work Habits

Our school has adopted the acronym PAR (Present, Accountable, Respectful) to highlight positive habits. My co-teacher and I took the broad topics and retooled them to explain what each element looks like in class. To support our school initiative, we included them first.

·       Learning Standards and Targets

This page simply lists our Standards and Learning Targets for the course (I described my process for developing them here and here). These will be included with each individual assignment within Weekly Learning Guides, but they are on clear display here.

·       My To-Read List

This semester, I will see half of my students on Tuesday/Thursday and the other half of each class on Wednesday/Friday (with Monday being a virtual day for all). I’ll encourage the reading of ebooks, but I do also hope to have students borrow books from our classroom library. My goal is to get students to develop a list of books they want to read based on book-talks and peer recommendations. Independent choice reading has been central to our class for the past couple years.

·       Books I’ve Read this Semester

As students finish books, they can record them here.

·       Additional Links

I think I may still have students utilize a separate Google Doc to categorize and track their use of sentence types and punctuation usage. I did not want such a chart to dominate this Student Portal, and I did not want it disjointedly appearing in each individual Weekly Learning Guide. Once we are ready to introduce it, students can add the hyperlink to their copy of their Student Portal themselves. This will also go for any other resources we may need. I’m not sure how useful this page will be or if, during second semester (we’re on an intensified 4x4 block, so classes are only a semester long) , I’ll just add the grammar/style evidence chart here instead. I am keeping this section for the fall semester for flexibility purposes.

·       Weekly and Quarterly Reflections

This section is the most important—I had considered placing it first, but I also felt since it would be the section that grew in length that it would be easiest to manage at the bottom of the document.

I have the semester broken into four sets of five weeks with mid-quarter, quarter, mid-quarter, and semester grade pitches after each set. Each week, students will have to hyperlink their Weekly Learning Guide to the bullet for Week X for easy access.

At the end of each Weekly Learning Guide, I will provide a reflection prompt to students based off the learning targets of that week. I will be looking for at least a strong paragraph each week, but students may not necessarily write about every learning target. They will then copy-and-paste the reflection from that week into their Student Learning Portal Document under that week. Then, each mid-quarter and quarter, students will present a grade and explain what they have evidence of achieving and where they should go from there.

I am considering having students record an audio explanation of their grade as well to link to the box. When we get closer to a grade pitch, I will provide more guidelines, but their weekly reflections will begin to prepare them to discuss evidence and their learning trajectory.

This Student Learning Portal could also potentially be shared with parents, and can definitely be shared with Special Education case managers as needed for direct access to student work (since each weekly document will be hyperlinked). This also allows my co-teacher and I to quickly navigate each student’s progress across multiple weeks.

NEXT STEPS

In my next post, I hope to detail a draft template for my Weekly Learning Guide. From there, I can revise my rubrics (since grades will no longer be attached to them), develop a Google Site syllabus (with short explanatory screencasts of major ideas like assessment), determine how to report work completion (without grades) in our gradebook (Infinite Campus), and begin lesson planning before students begin on September 8^th!