6 Reasons to Engage Students in Regular Reflective Thinking Routines

January 2024 is now upon us, and it’s usually at this time that many of us take a moment to pause and reflect. We reflect on the year gone by, the highlights and the lowlights, what we learned and how we want to move forward into a new year.

This process has made me think about how reflection shows up in our classrooms. Is it an integral part of our daily routines? Or just something we ‘do’, as a matter of course, at key moments throughout the year (when we finish a unit, at the beginning/end of the year etc.)?

And, more importantly, does it matter?

Research supports numerous benefits for students (and ourselves!) when we intentionally dedicate time throughout our busy day for reflection. Not only is it a chance to invite stillness, silence and peace into our classrooms, but it builds within our students crucial lifelong learning skills and metacognitive awareness.

Here are 6 reasons why engaging students in regular reflective thinking routines is a powerful pedagogical move!

Reflective thinking is an intentional invitation to press the ‘pause button’.

There’s no question about it.

Our modern-day classrooms are vibrant, active, energizing and expressive  environments!

Discussions, collaborative group projects, frequent transitions, flexible seating arrangements and busy schedules can all contribute to creating an environment that is stimulating and, for some, rather overwhelming.

For this reason, it’s important that we create balance within our classroom by intentionally slowing down the pace and finding moments of the day where our students can pause and reflect.  Prioritizing reflection models for your students the importance of slowing down and taking the time to look inward at one’s thoughts, feelings and wonderings.  What’s happening inside of us is just as important, if not more so, than what’s happening outside of us.  What a beautiful gift to give our students!

Reflection connects students with their learning.

Reflection deepens students’ understanding, not only of content, but of themselves as learners. Through purposeful reflective routines, students are encouraged to dig deeper into their thinking. This may be through identifying what they’ve discovered, exploring their wonderings, considering how they’re feeling about what they’ve learned, or planning for what might be next in the learning journey. “When students use these strategies often, they become more comfortable with the language of reflection and the kind of thinking it demands. Reflection becomes part of the learning process - not simply something ‘done at the end’.” (Murdoch, 2005, p.5)

Reflection strengthens metacognitive awareness.

Metacognition is the ability to think about one’s thinking, and is vital to the learning process (Fisher, Frey & Hattie, 2016).

Research by Hattie (2016) into the pedagogical practices that have the most significant impact on student achievement revealed that intentionally embedding metacognitive strategy building into the classroom had an effect size of 0.69. For context, anything above 0.40 is considered a highly positive impact on student achievement! Intentionally planning for and engaging students in regular reflective routines is one way we can build this metacognitive awareness.

Reflective thinking doesn’t come naturally to everyone.

Not everyone is naturally inclined to be reflective, and as our students develop and mature, they need guidance in becoming more cognitively aware (Fisher, Frey & Hattie, 2016). Just like strengthening a muscle, building our ability to be reflective requires intentional and consistent practice.

I am sure you can think about a time when you tried to build a new routine into your day-to-day life and the intentional effort that was required to make that routine a habit! Embedding reflective routines within your daily classroom practice is no different! Consistency and intentionality will go a long way toward building a natural habit of reflection within your students.

Purposeful reflection builds lifelong learning skills.

Inviting your students to take moment to reflect may appear, on the surface, to be a pretty simple thinking task. But, in actual fact, the brain processes that occur when we deliberately engage in reflection develop a crucial set of skills fundamental to lifelong learning.

Christine Edwardes-Groves (2003) identifies a wide range of these lifelong skills, including the ability to:

• Comprehend

• Evaluate

• Assess

• Summarize

• Sythesize

• Monitor

• Plan

• Think critically

• Self-manage

• Transfer learning

Reflective routines give us unique insight into our students’ minds.

Any opportunity to dig deeply into our students’ minds is a powerful one. Not only does it give us a chance to learn something about our students that we may otherwise never have known, but it’s also an excellent way to monitor the efficacy of our teaching. What’s sticking? Where are the gaps? What are our learners wanting to know more about? What’s next?

What a powerful way for us, as role models for our students, to become reflective ourselves by using the thinking of our learners to self-assess our own practice.