Today we had a very exciting day at Roosevelt; it was my teacher and one of my student’s birthdays, which meant lots of treats. The students sang happy birthday in 5 different languages, including English, Spanish, Hebrew, Portuguese and Italian. It was wonderful seeing different cultures brought into the classroom by the students. During science the students got to make slime, which of course was the highlight of the week. We talked about changes in state from liquid to solid, and then the students got to experiment with making slime. Since I was going to be going back to El Agustino for their after school program we had to leave Roosevelt early to make it in time. Once lunchtime was over, we had our seminar and headed back on the bus to head to El Agustino. When we arrived, we were dropped off at a large soccer field filled with children of all ages. This time we were paired with the older boys. Right away we began soccer drills, running games, and even practiced head budding! After the warm up, we were split into teams with the boys and began the tournament. Although none of us out very skilled soccer players, we had so much fun playing with the boys; many of them wanted us to teach them English words, which is always pretty funny. Reflection is a part of everyday life; we often do it without being fully aware of it happening. Reflection allows for our brains to sort things out and make sense of what we hear, see, and experience. As Clara points out, “reflection is crucial in the field of teaching and teacher education.” Critical reflection is an important step towards critical pedagogy. Teachers must reflect on their practices in order to improve them or adjust them. Reflection during implementation is just as important as reflection after implementation. Educators need to be aware of how a lesson is doing during the lesson so that they can make changes based on the students and not go through an entire lesson that is not benefitting the students. This will also help students learn since the lesson is being altered for them to best help them. Without reflection, there is no way to self evaluating oneself or the environment around them. Reflection can be anything that involves thinking and creating change or improvement from the thinking (reflection) process. I do not think that reflection always needs to be a formal process but rather it can take place informally over coffee or in conversation with others. Often, I find that reflection can be really beneficial when it takes place in a informal dialogue. As the students work on their end-of-year portfolios, they have been asked to reflect on their learning, which ties in nicely with what we have been learning in class. The students come up with lists for each subject of the content they have learned and then go through and write down what they are the best at. Students were also given a checklist of sentences and they had to check off whether they did it or not, for example, I can write with capitol letters and use interesting words when I write. Just as reflection is important for teachers, it is also important for students so that they are aware of how much they have learned, and this helps the teacher reflection on how much the students have learned. It was powerful seeing how excited the students where when they could write down all of the things that they learned in 1st grade. "Everyday in every way, I am getting better and better."
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