30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 20: Collaborative Curator and Student Curation

Day 20: How do you curate student work - or help them do it themselves?

I see myself as a Collaborative Curator in the teams I work with. I help students to curate the huge amounts of resources available to them and help provide them with strategies, tools and resources to enhance their learning.

In terms of curating student creations, I am still working on that. I do a number of things: we post our work around the classroom, in the hallways, on our class blog, on Twitter and we organize it in our "Book Apartments" (I hate desks, so students always work at tables, but that means they lose desk storage space. I have wooden shelves for them to keep their notebooks, duotangs and work, a few years ago, the students named them "Book Apartments". The name stuck), we put work together in collaborative books (Class Glossary, an atlas of imaginary places, poetry collections), we organize our work on the Google Drive, and each individual student selects examples of his or her work to showcase in SLCs (Student Led Conferences).

I would like students to take more, regular ownership over curating their work. I really liked using "Proof Cards" in the final SLC of the year last year and found that, after a year of modelling how to curate work, reflect on our learning and celebrate the process of learning (not just the product), students effectively used them. They selected work that showcased all stages of their learning and that proved what they had learned. They curated work in their Work Apartments and talked about their ongoing learning.

I hope to incorporate blogs into my teaching this year. Several years ago, I helped four classes students curate and distribute their work through individual History blogs. This was terrific for them and for me and I am considering ways to make this work with my grade 3/4s this year.

30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 19: Student Reflection

Day 19: Name three powerful ways students can reflect on their learning, then discuss closely the one you use most often.

Without reflecting on their learning, learners are missing out on metacognition, the way that we become actively involved with our thinking. Metacognition ensures that students are more independent and effective learners.

Three ways students can actively engage with their learning by reflecting through:

• goal setting and monitoring
• reflecting on their own and others' work
• written reflections

In my classroom, we:

• set goals and monitor our progress
• we collaborate to create SMART goals that are individual
• we post our goals in places where we'll see them often
• last year, we tracked our goals online using lift.do daily
• because it is a social network, we could give one another encouragement and celebrate successes
• reflecting on our own and others' work through planned reflection and dialogue
• from the beginning of the year, we provide constructive feedback to one another, focusing on successes and areas for improvement
• students learn to phrase their feedback for peers as, "I liked it when....Next time...." and the person receiving the feedback simply replies with "Thank you". 
• in this way, we are constructive and supportive and the we don't argue with feedback, we simply take it in the way it was intended, to support us and push our learning further
• we watch one another trying new things in a "Fish Bowl", where a small group sits in the middle of a circle and practices a new skill (such as group work)
• the observers outside the "Fish Bowl" watch, when we are finished, we offer feedback about the process to help us all
• we show "Examples" and "Non-examples" to prepare all
• students get to act out great work habits as a model as well as undesired behaviours and methods
• we are inspired by the Daily 5, where this strategy is written about extensively
• reflect on our learning in writing (and drawing) to know ourselves as learners and push our thinking further by asking questions and making coneections
• students think about "What Stuck With You Today?" and share it aloud, in writing or in drawings
• students reflect on different elements of their learning through 321 organizers
• For example: 3 things you learned, 2 things you're still wondering, 1 thing you are proud of

I am still deeply in the process of learning, and I find I use a number of different strategies to reflect. The two I use most often right now include seeking feedback from my PLN (online and in person) and writing on this blog.