This year, part of my plan to develop student ownership over their learning is to teach them to write deep and expansive reflections about their learning. I am taking this a step further by taking their end of Term One Reflection and turning it into their learning comment for their School Report.
How much of this is just lip service versus real learning remains to be seen however, the thoughts that they have written down here are on a deep well thought out and positive note. Here is a few examples from the students reflections in Social Studies on what they have learned about citizenship.
“I learnt that my feelings are just the same as everybody else's and that no singular person on earth is any more important. For example Barack Obama is just the same as a hungry kid in poverty, we are all humans we are all part of one society and we're all living life. Things that you say or do can affect people in good or bad ways, especially if we continue to say these things. I learnt this from Minecraft when everybody was fighting and trying to make a one high power.”
“We learnt how to be useful and help citizen by critically thinking about our action and being informed about the things happening around the Minecraft community.”
“our group learnt if we fight we aren't going to go anywhere with our project”
“I learnt how to have a hacker and a growth mindset. I'm still working on it, it's helping me lots like when I'm running in fitness not to stop and to keep on going and to tell myself I can do this and set myself a goal, I also learnt how to not give up”
“I learnt that in a community not everyone would like to abide rules and help you. I think because maybe people don't like to be pushed and controlled by others.”
“I really enjoyed it when we had Minecraft sessions because it's a way where we all work together in teams or by ourselves and make a house or whatever you wanted to build which actually will help you later in life because you learn how to work as a team and construct a house or something with others and share your stuff that you have collected so you both have what you both need to work together.”
“The people that learn the patience skill can respect the fact that other people are busy or something got delayed and they wait patiently for events to happen. This means I can wait for people or events to happen without annoying anyone.”
“I learnt about teamwork. That something gets done much quicker if you work as a team. I also learnt that whatever the rules, some people are gonna break them.”
“The Minecraft sessions helped us learn what it was like to be in a community, and how to cooperate within a large community such as the class server. It helped us understand the struggles that real communities go through, and how disobeying the law can disrupt the entire country/community you're in.”
“I love the fact that we get taught about reflections because it is such a good way of finding out how you feel about something and what's working and what not working and needs to be modified.”
“That you have to take responsibility for anything you do like learning and that if you don't you won't get anywhere in life.”
“There isn't any limit to what you're learning and that once you've achieved the skill, you feel good about yourself because you've done it on your own.”
“I learned how to cooperate, how to be patient, how to be considerate of others”
“We created our own learning instead of having Mr Potter arrange it for us.”
“I have learnt how to self-direct myself in class and to teach myself new things”
“I learnt how to play fairly and being cooperative playing two on two basketball because of the SDL plan. It helped me because there was no one there to supervise the game so we had to play fairly and play as a team.”
“I learnt that finding a good and strong relationships in the community is to be loyal to other members and contribute, constructive criticism, responsibility and treat other people as you want to be treated.”
“Also it is always good to be trustworthy of your mates because everything is about trust.”
“We learnt how to work well as a team but all of us learnt how to direct ourselves, make good decisions and to manage our time well.”
“To be active members for our society as well as always wanting to improve no matter how smart we are.”
“I also learnt communication skills which will help me talk to other people more confidently and give me more chances in life.”
“To be a great citizen you have to learn to cope with people and learn to treat them how you like to be treated.”
“I learned that being patient is hard if people keep on frustrating you, that teamwork is based in trust, it only goes well if you trust each other and the final one that I learnt was that if you were to become a positive proactive citizen, then everyone would need to work together, meaning you can't force people to agree to the choices that you made.”
“We learnt how not having certain roles to play in a community things can get quite "chaotic".”
“In Minecraft we didn't just learn to build houses out of pixelated bricks, we also learnt to use common decency and to treat others as you would like to be treated (because trust me, ‘killing’ others for no reason does not make friends).”
“I also learnt how to reflect on myself and judge 'if I had done well or not' or 'had I learnt anything'.”
“I learnt that being part of a community, you can't just do what you want, because everyone's opinion will decide how the community will flow.”
“What I have seen is very interesting, ideas were all shared and put into action but I thought "was there actually any planning involved in this".”
“In Minecraft we learnt skills and rules about what it is like to live in a community with other people such as respecting others property and realising what happens when trust is broken such as being able to trust and keep things private with each other but it gets compromised because of jealousy or even for laughs but both are unacceptable.”
“If you have a fixed mindset you will instantly give up because you think that you can not improve any more, if you have a growth mindset you will always get back up even if you have failed, you think that there is always room for improvement.”
“I found out that in mine craft and in the real world is that without laws and rules there will be chaos.”
“I learned how crucial it is to live in a positive community, not just in mine craft but also in our everyday lives. I learned that it is important to follow the rules also known as laws that we have set out for us, otherwise there are going to be awful consequences depending on how atrocious the situation was.”