Why it is important and how to do it Reflective Writing Why it is important and how to do it

Dewey in 1993 laid out six steps in the reflective process Having the experience The spontaneous interpretation of the experience Naming the problems or the questions that arise from the experience Generating possible explanations for the problems or questions Ramifying the explanations into full blown hypothesis Experimenting or testing the hypothesis And you all get to at least the third point every time you teach, its getting past point three that makes us outstanding practitioners

White hat Descriptions – Think about Here you need to reflect on the facts, think about the concrete. Don't begin to add positive or negative statements at this point, stay neutral. Information and data, who are you teaching? What are you teaching them? What do you know about students or the subject? How did you get the information you needed to plan this lesson? What happened? Give concise, relevant & factual details. Timing, did you stick to the plan? Did students make progress? What grade might you give yourself?

Yellow hat This is your chance to celebrate and highlight your achievements, without addressing anything that you think could have gone better! Stick to the positives, be proud and make sure you identify at least one thing in every reflection.  What went well? What features of the lesson would you use again? Is there something that you did well that will help in future lessons, or with other students? What was your glory moment? If you had to send a praise postcard home to yourself what features of your lesson would it refer to? When did the most learning occur? How do you know that they were engaged? Does your lesson plan show evidence of outstanding planning? Did you react well to the learning of your students and get the best out of all of them? Did every student make progress? How did you differentiate so that every student felt supported and challenged? 

Black Hat In this section of reflection address any negative aspects of your lesson frankly and without being too self critical, everyone makes mistakes its how we learn from them that enable us to grow. Honestly assess all the EBI's your lesson included What was bad about the experience? What made you think this? What would you change immediately? Is there anything you need to work on for longer in order to improve it? What effect did the worst moments in your lesson produce? Was there a point in your lesson where you could see disaster looming? Are any of the subject knowledge areas in this lesson a weakness? Did you fail to motivate or enthuse pupils, how did you recognise this? Were you tasks relevant end engaging? What happened to affect the pace of your lesson? Did you leave the lesson knowing whether each pupil had made progress? If they didn't make progress, how did you know? If students complain about your lessons what might they say?

4. The Red Hat: A chance to express your feelings How did you react to events in the lesson? How did the behaviour, learning or lack there of make you feel at the time? Why? can you explain your feelings in this situation? How did this affect your actions and thoughts during the lesson? did you over react to something or choose to ignore something else because of how it made you feel? Looking back, do you still feel the same about your lesson? If not, why do you think your feelings have changed? If you had to rate your confidence at every ten minutes in the lesson what would that look like? Are you proud of what happened in that learning episode?  It is important you are honest with yourself here, even if it may feel uncomfortable!

5. The Green Hat: Get Creative It is critical that you sum up the key things learned considering the main factors affecting the situation, and what to improve such as specific skills or knowledge. Try to do so in a creative way, don't limit yourself to the situation as it is in front of you, in a perfect world what could you do differently? What new resource could you devise? Is there a way you could really motivate students to make progress? What if you ran this lesson again but used a totally different teaching and learning style? Imagine you have no paper based resources at all, could you design something that still ensures progress is made? Adding numeracy literacy or SMSC, could you creatively engage your students in one of these areas? What if you plan the lesson and watch someone lese deliver it? Could you use your team to support your development? Are there any solutions to your black hat issues?

6. The Blue Hat: Process and function, how will you do what needs doing? Wearing this hat you need to think about the nuts and bolts of what you need in order to improve. Do you need different resources? Where could find these? Do you need to seek support from others? Can you use any of your future planning opportunity to ensure you get progress for all pupils? What training sessions are coming up, are they relevant to the area you are reflecting on? What do you need to prioritise? Could you find some time to joint plan? Observe other staff? What research, papers or national agenda articles are there around the issue you are considering? Could reading help you? How will you judge your improvement next time? What criteria will show success, for you, for students, for colleagues? Is there any evidence you can use from this lesson plan or reflection for any TS? What subject knowledge improvement could you make? What could you do to evidence your knowledge?

8. The Orange Hat: An addition to De Bono's hats Yes we've invented this, it doesn't exist in De Bono's structure but in teaching we have a range of "other people" to think about, not just ourselves. In order however to fully align a teachers reflections with the thinking hats analogy, we feel the need to add an additional hat. The orange hat, addressing the perspective of others. Teaching involves numerous different stakeholders and as such, engaging with how they may reflect on your practice is critical to ensuring that all, or as many stakeholders as possible, are happy with what you are doing. Ultimately we need students to progress but there are many other consideration that other stakeholders will want addressing. What would a student say about your lesson? Would you be happy to share this with your department? If not why not, if you would, why? Your HoD is looking for examples of pupil progress, would this lesson please them? You have a very difficult parent of a student in this lesson, would they be happy? How much home contact have you made for this group? Are you keeping to the SoW or specification? Are you keeping to the rota if this is a shared group? How does your lesson impact on other staff? What evidence do you have that there is progress for all students? If there is a TA or other staff member in the room, how do you think your lesson was from their perspective? If you had to observe a colleague teaching this lesson what feedback would you give them? Think about your TF or OFSTED are you demonstrating your outstanding teaching? what in your plan shows that you are outstanding?