Connect Instructional Activities - Reflection
Description: Reflection activities are simple learning experiences that prompt the learner to examine ideas from a new perspective. Reflection activities encourage broader and more in-depth thought about a topic, and they can promote conceptual breakthroughs by getting learners to integrate separate ideas in new and different ways (Horton, p. 170).
Types of Reflection Activities
- Rhetorical questions ask thought provoking questions to direct attention to an aspect of the subject.
- Meditations promote a relaxed, open consideration of the subject.
- Cite-example activities require the learners to identify real-world instances of a concept or category.
- Evaluations ask learners to judge the importance or value of an item under study (p. 170).
- Summary activities require learners to identify and recap important principles, concepts, facts, tips, and other items of learning (p. 171)
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- Best Practices
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- Ask stop-and-think questions
- Clarify the purpose of the activity
- Require searching to find examples
- Specify the type of reflections sought by showing a few examples as a model
- Encourage personal examples
- Set a context for the evaluation
- Require criteria. Have learners state the criteria they used to judge the idea.
- Require precision (pp. 172-181).