Reflection often has two components. . . me thinking about what I am doing and a conversation with another who may ask questions, seek clarification or express their own opinion. Reflection involves growth or change for me--even if that is simply an affirmation as I think over what happened.
For example, I often happen upon a workable strategy "in the moment" and I have found others do too. . .
Recently I read on the British Columbia Math teachers forum a link to a site that explained another way of doing long division, using only the multiples of 100, 10, 5, 2 and 1. When I showed it to my teammates (5th grade teachers) one of them said, "Oh, I created that in my differentiation class" and then proceeded to pull up an explanation that was very similar. So, for her, as we talked about how this would work in a classroom it was an affirmation of her earlier work, while for me, the conversation afforded an opportunity to think through with a trusted colleague, the steps and procedures we would use as we team taught. (She, by the way, is the Special Ed resource teacher and I am the Gifted Resource Teacher--and we combine our math classes three times weekly to differentiate and share strategies. . . talk about action research!)
Check out this link and share your opinion: http://mindfull:wordpress.com (about halfway down where it begins "Division is about sharing.")
Enjoy!
Paula
