The end of the school year is a time of reflection for me. I think back through the year and I wonder about what worked and what could have worked better. I make plans to change things for next year. Reflection is powerful. It changes me.
I ask my students to reflect too. We reflect on ourselves as readers and writers, as students and as people. This week a simple exercise in organizing gave my students an opportunity to reflect on themselves as writers.
Living in this digital age, much of our writing ends up online...in google drive or on the blog. This week, we went through google drive and organized our writing. Then we went through our blog and copied our posts into google drive. It was meant to serve as a place to hold their writing for seventh and eighth grades. It turned into reflecting.
"Oh my goodness! I wrote this?! It's terrible!"
"I can't believe I didn't write this better!"
I kept hearing statements like these from my sixth graders as they browsed through their writing.
"I totally forgot that I wrote this! WOW!"
"Hey, this is pretty good. I should finish this."
Listening to them reflect on themselves as writers made me smile. In my reflecting, I will think that my students consider themselves writers. They've grown and they can see their growth.
As my students organized, I returned to my online writing folder too. It made me want to write again...so I did. I've been writing daily this week.
Thank you to Ruth Ayres for providing this space to share our celebrations. Please join us and share your own!
