Task 2c

Reflective........... Reflective theory, reflective practive..... reflective!! I was very unsure how i was going to tackle this question and how the hell i would make it benefit my learning, how I would talk about this is detail with knowledge and understanding. Which is when i realised surely I have just processed through my mind what I was going to and I needed to reflect on the word reflect!! so let me give it go.......
I researched into the four practisioners listed in the handbook the first one being... John dewey. He believed the as education is and the way people learn is from what i understood long! Learning from a text book or worksheet is not beneficial but learning through experience is. He said students should be involved in real life task and challenges. There are many ways in which I agree with this, children i have to teach are only 4 and 5 they are expected to write a sentence about a plant growing but surely these children get more from actually going outside and planting that seed and growing the plant... Yes indeed they do as this is a task we carried out. Children learn by doing, as they can relate to it more if they have experienced it just like me or you! Last night I watched a documentary on autistic children, which i may add was very interesting and inspiring. Many of them were in their teens and were approching the 'real world' soon. Their school which was in america had fake shops and sorting offices for the pupils to role play in. This is so key to any child but espeically the less fortunate who may need support in later life. It meant they could go to the shops alone and buy their own shopping. They had tasks like to add up the money of the items get the money out. I was so pleased to see this. From experience of being in setting where children are made to follow the national curriculm and students falling so behind as there not interested or do not understand it , seeing that documentary was such an eye opener. Life skills is what we all need and learning through experience is key to the journey we all make. John Dewey also beleieved that learning through the arts is a great method. I again strongly agree, I spent 4 years at Chickenshed Theatre and many of that i spent learning through the arts, it is so accessible to many people and lets you become the learning material! It can be very hard to always use this in my work for timing and planning purposes but I do always try to as much as I can. Recently the children had to learn a story, their favourite one. Many of them struggled to remember the key moments so i took groups at a time and asked them to role play their story and already they had thought of their key moments.


Whilst researching Kolb I came the diagram which I thought I would try out. When first looking at the diagram it look very familiar to a way I work at school. In the handbook you asked if im aware if I use it in my work,... No i was not but yes I am now. Every week we have to observe children, we have to note down anything they do which meets the Early years foundation stage we then think of activitues to move them on which I never knew is reflecting. I had to reflect on what I observed to get my next stage from the child. Here is a picture of the diagram I tried out.....

After doing that diagram it does make the term reflection seem simple. I have and do all four of them everyday and proabably more than once. But actually writting it down is completly different it puts your own throught process down on a paper.

I looked briefly at Schon who talks about reflecting in the middle of doing something and reflecting when looking back on something. At work at the moment we are currently trying out new ways of pushing the childrens learning on. We have to observe what the child is doing, ie throwning a ball through a hoop, us as a teacher moving that childs learing on there and then has to thing of a next step, ie can you count how many times you get the ball through the hoop. This is Schon's 'IN the middle of' practise. Also the way we presently are doing it is we observe a child ie she was role playing being at the doctors. So then a week later we would reflect on this and have to think back and think how to foward the childs learning ie get child to draw surgery and label. Activities do have to change they may not work or ay not be liked therefore we have to think on the spot, there and then and change it prompto!


Lastly I will just mention Jennifer Moon who I believe is one of the lastest to go into reflection. as i was researching her the term 'learning journal stood out to me. this is because all of our children have these and that is what there called. It a chance for the 'childs voice'. It's their work they choose they they talk about what they have done... This is a diagram that we use to help the childs though process, which i lead to believe they are reflecting on....