Some practical ideas include introducing a different task, clearer instructions, time-based activities and activities which appeal to different learning styles. Will this be decided by looking at data, each learner’s performance or an aspect of the curriculum? Being reflective will also make sure you have a wider range of skills as you find new ways to teach. This will develop your confidence in the classroom as you find the best ways to deliver your knowledge of a subject.

Plan, Reflect, Repeat: The Whittaker Journal - Goodreads Plan, Reflect, Repeat: The Whittaker Journal - Goodreads

By getting involved in the reflective process, you will create an environment of partnership-working as you question and adapt both your own practice and that of your students and other colleagues. The learning process then becomes an active one as you are more aware of what you want your students to achieve, delivering results which can be shared throughout the institution. Educational researchers have long promoted the importance of reflecting on practice to support student learning and staff development.Act: Take action based on what you learned in the study step. If the change did not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were successful, incorporate what you learned from the test into wider changes. Use what you learned to plan new improvements, beginning the cycle again. This is where you make sure students play an active part in their learning. You will ask them to carry out a short reflection on how well they felt the lesson went and to assess the lesson’s strengths and possible ideas for development. The theoretical approach of reflection as a cyclical model was further developed by Gibbs (1998). This model is based on a six-stage approach, leading from a description of the experience through to conclusions and considerations for future events. While most of the core principles are similar to Kolb’s, Gibbs' model is broken down further to encourage the teacher to reflect on their own thoughts and feelings. Some practical examples include coloured pens, larger paper, handouts, cut-up activities, specialised equipment.

Plan, Reflect, Repeat: The Whittaker Journal - Goodreads

The Benefits of PDCA ( Quality Progress) The brief history of PDCA and an example of PDCA in action help establish the use of this cycle for continuous process improvement. By reflecting, you will develop abilities to solve problems. Through questioning and changing the way you deliver your lessons, you will find new solutions and become more flexible with your teaching. It allows you to take time to assess and appreciate your own teaching.Variations: plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle, Deming cycle, Shewhart cycle. Understand the evolution of these variations. Reflection-on-action should encourage ideas on what you need to change for the future. You carry out reflection-on-action outside the classroom, where you consider the situation again. This requires deeper thought, for example, as to why the students did not understand the topic. It encourages you to consider causes and options, which should be informed by a wider network of understanding from research. A learning journal is a collection of notes, observations, thoughts and other relevant materials built up over a period of time and recorded together. By working with other colleagues and students, relationships become positive and demonstrate mutual respect. Students feel part of the learning cycle and are more self-aware. Colleagues can ‘team up’, drawing on expertise and support. This will develop the whole institution’s best practice. All of these things together result in a productive working environment.

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David Kolb, educational researcher, developed a four-stage reflective model. Kolb’s Learning Cycle (1984) highlights reflective practice as a tool to gain conclusions and ideas from an experience. The aim is to take the learning into new experiences, completing the cycle. Kolb's cycle follows four stages. As well as using a model of reflection, you can carry out other reflective activities to develop your practice. These can include the following. Part 3: The final webcast provides an example application of PDCA and explores the benefits of using PDCA. By varying learning and experimenting with new approaches, students have a richer learning experience. They will think more creatively, imaginatively and resourcefully, and be ready to adapt to new ways and methods of thinking. As with other models, Gibb'sbegins with an outline of the experience being reflected on. It then encourages us to focus on ourfeelings about the experience, both during it an after. The next step involves evaluating the experience - what was good or bad about it from our point of view? We can then use this evaluation to analyse the situation and try to make sense of it. This analysis will result in a conclusion about what other actions (if any) we could have taken to reach a different outcome. The final stage involves building an action plan of steps which we can take the next time we find ourselves in a similar situation.

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Reflective practice develops your ability to understand how your students learn and the best ways to teach them. By reflecting on your teaching, you identify any barriers to learning that your students have. You then create lessons which reteach any content which your students have not been able to access to allow them to overcome any obstacles and develop. Reflecting and responding to your reflections will directly affect your students as you change and adapt your teaching. You will reteach and reassess the lessons you have taught, and this will allow students the chance to gain new skills and strengthen learning. Creating evaluation models will help you to know whether the actions you have taken have had the intended effect. All these approaches are explained in the ‘Next steps’ section and provide a guide of how to carry out reflective practice, using the following. Trying out new methods or approaches in the classroom can create new learning opportunities. These changes can be as simple as varying a small activity or as adventurous as changing your whole approach or plan. Do your students ultimately understand what success looks like in the task or activity? Can they express this for themselves?

Plan, Reflect, Repeat: The Whittaker Journal by Carys

Formal and informal assessments take place continually, from daily teacher assessments to six-week progress reports to annual standardized tests. Teachers also can access comparative data on the electronic database to identify trends. High-need students are monitored by a special child study team. Reflective practice also helps create confident students. As a result of reflecting, students are challenged as you use new methods in the classroom. From reflection, you should encourage your students to take new challenges in learning, developing a secure and confident knowledge base.Being reflective helps you challenge your own practice as you will justify decisions and rationalise choices you have made. The cycle shows that we will start with an experience, either something we have been through before or something completely new to us. This experience can be positive or negative and may be related to our work or something else. Once something has been experienced we will start to reflect on what happened. This will allow us to think through the experience, examine our feelings about what happened and decide on the next steps. This leads to the final element of the cycle - taking an action. What we do as a result of an experience will be different depending on the individual. This action will result in another experience and the cycle will continue. Reflecting on your teaching will help you to understand how your students best learn and will allow you to be accountable for their progress. By assessing the strengths and weaknesses in your own teaching, you will develop an awareness of the factors that control and prevent learning. Reflection-in-action is reflection during the ‘doing’ stage (that is, reflecting on the incident while it can still benefit the learning). This is carried out during the lesson rather than reflecting on how you would do things differently in the future. This is an extremely efficient method of reflection as it allows you to react and change an event at the time it happens. For example, in the classroom you may be teaching a topic which you can see the students are not understanding. Your reflection-in-action allows you to understand why this has happened and how to respond to overcome this situation.