These articles taught me a lot about self-reflection. I felt that the most important thing to take away was that learning strategies explicitly will help the students become better learners, which is ultimately our goal as teachers. Not only this, but if the students are given a chance to think about their strategies, errors, and goals, they are better able to articulate how they plan on improving.
However, it is important to remember that there is a such thing as inundating the students with too much information. The explicit strategy teaching should be built seamlessly into the lesson, which is possible but difficult. We will have to build those into our lesson plans, knowing exactly what strategies would work best with which exercises.
I was trying to figure out how to have the students reflect without forcing a study on them, or several surveys. I know that journaling is often done, however, there are many more options. Exit-slips, or asking the students to recall what they've learned that day, would help solidify this explicit instruction. In these exit-slips, I could ask the students to set a few goals for their language learning and how they think that strategy will or will not help them achieve that goal. By providing the students with many strategies, my classroom would be sensitive to all students needs, abilities, and learning styles. The hardest part, I think, will be fitting them into the lesson without interrupting the flow of what I'm teaching.
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