The Use of Reflective Journals in the Junior

Classrooms

By Lisa Wiparata and Jo Selbie

Our Aim

• To investigate how the use of reflective journals influences and develops children’s thinking about their learning…

Research Question

• Does the use of reflective journals enhance children’s thinking about their learning?

• How will the use of De Bono’s hats focus the children’s thinking?

What We Did And How We Did It?

• We were interested in exploring the use of reflective journals as a tool for developing children’s rich language when talking about their learning experiences.

• We wanted children to be able to articulate aspects of the learning that had taken place.

• This was a project undertaken by 3 teachers in the junior syndicate. We recorded in our class journals after discussions, brain storms, mind maps about learning that had taken place that week.

• Teachers talked about appropriate language use for the different hats eg. Red Hat –

“I was amazed when…”“Something special for me was…”

“I felt..”

• Teachers took photos of a variety of learning experiences over each week and these were used to facilitate discussion and focus children’s thinking.

• As the older children became more experienced in focused thinking about their learning they moved into recording in their individual Learning Logs.

Challenges• Ensuring photos had been taken of

different learning experiences.• For the New Entrant teacher it was

difficult with the number of children moving to new classes and new children coming in to keep the continuity going.

• Keeping the journals going regularly with the number of interruptions to the classroom programme.

Conclusions• Children responded very well to the

digital photos as it ‘jogged’ their memories and focused them on the learning that had taken place.

• The children were engaged when contributing to the reflective journals.

• The language used by the children improved and became more descriptive. They began to use a variety of rich language rather than copying what the child before had said.

• The older children were driven to ask about the possibility of them starting their own individual journals. This was an exciting progression as it showed their developing independence.

Student VoiceStudent Voice“I like my Learning Log because I write about the things I have had fun doing at

school” By Anaia

“Sam and Fonz came to visit. We weren’t allowed to pat the dog because it would make friends with the person and they wouldn’t attack the bad person and the dog wouldn’t take

him to jail.

“ Every Friday I get to write about stuff I have done at school” By Reuben

“ Room 3 painted mythological creatures. Reuben’s was half giraffe half rabbit. It has a giraffes neck and a rabbit’s head.

It has a giraffe’s legs and a rabbit’s tail.”

We do our Learning Logs every Friday and we have to write about learning we have done at school”

By Anna

“ Every Tuesday my class do gymnastics and it is fun. We do forward rolls and we jump off lots of things…Next week we

will be going to a festival for our gymnastics. It will be fun. We will do it somewhere where we have never been before.”