Reflecting and Looking Ahead

Reflection is an integral part of the Primary Years Program for teachers and students. It is an attribute of the Learner Profile outlining the need for learners to give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience as well as encouraging assessing and understanding our strengths and limitation to support and develop goals for growth.
Reflection is also one of the key concepts that drives our units of inquiry. When we explore a topic, or a big idea, reflection encourages us to look at our conclulsions and understandings, questions our evidence and consider our methods of reasoning. The idea is to find out for yourself, while considering how we know what we know.
The PYP rationale for its inclusion of reflection as a key concept is as follows: it challenges students to examine their evidence, methods and evidence. In doing so , it extends their thinking into higher order of metacognition, begins to acquaint them with what it means to know in different disciplines, and encourages them to be rigorous in examing evidence for potential bias or other inaccuracies.
The idea of extending our thinking is a powerful one. When we reflect on what me know and how-we must make the leap to analyzing our knowledge and evaluating its origins and accuracy. This is powerful and in a world full of ever-changing data and information, encourages learners to seek out more than just unrelated facts.
We learn by asking questions, applying knowledge and seeking out more knowledge and information. This is the inquiry cycle and reflection drives it!