Teach Children Well: TEAM Research #21: Reflection

“We do not learn from experience...

we learn from reflecting on experience.”
- John Dewey

Students reflected on their TEAM Research projects with these reflection questions and process.

Their responses were similar and positive overall. The project highlights were the service learning market place, presentations, and displays. Research and collaboration were more challenging, and those comments demonstrated the need for more projects and learning that foster apt collaboration as well as thoughtful guided research efforts.

I chose a number of comments from their reflections to share. I bet that most adults can related to these project reflections.

Comments about Presentation

"I would change the way I said the words. I could have said the words better. I think we had good pace; we didn't stop and we didn't have dead silence."
"Yes!! I think the images help the the presentation to come alive."
"Writing the script I think because it was very fun to make up what you say."
" I also think the images helped the audience be more entertained because if there wasn’t images or a background, people would just be watching us talk."
"Next time when I write the script I hope our group can be more humorous because a lot of people were being funny. "
"I liked writing the script because it was fun and you got write what you wanted to say."
"There was the challenge of making the props for the script, and I learned about responsibility."
"If someone else had presented our report, I could close my eyes and be able to be taken to Australia with the tourist."
"Yes we used cute pictures to persuade the audience."
"I think it went well, and I would change that so we could have a dress rehearsal in the future."
"We used correct detail, craft, voice, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. We should have changed the script because it was not that interesting and it was too short."
"The highlights were I got to work with a nice group and we mostly always worked hard so it looked pretty good. I would do over our script a little like the props we could have planned/practiced with them and our presentation would have been a little bit more organized."

Comments about the Market Place

I really liked the sale, it was fun selling stuff to help save animals and if I were to do it again, I wouldn’t change anything.
"I loved selling stuff. iIt was really fun to sit there and sell things to different people."
"I liked that we made most of the objects, instead of buying them from the store. I would make more objects if I had time."
"I loved the sale and I want more shifts so we could earn even more money."
""What I liked about the sale was that we could buy stuff we liked for a cheap amount while saving endangered species. What I would change is we could have bought stuff for our sale and we probably would have made more money."

Comments about Displays

"I would maybe give everybody the same amount of clay for everyone."
"It was easy when we got to play with clay because i love crafts it was hard for me to do the research because i’m not very good with computers."
"My favorite part of this project was the display decorating because I got to be creative and explore different materials.

Comments abut Research and Google Slide Shows

"I liked writing about the individual animals. We could of had a specific time for making animations and games for the project."
"I liked how we used the computers and different websites to research."
"Research was boring at first, but then I realized it would help."
"My group collaborated by working on different slides which helped us finish faster. The challenges were finding the history because it didn’t really say any information on the La Tortuga Feliz site. The strengths of our group was getting the facts."

Comments about Collaboration

"I learned it is really hard to work with a team but you get through it and it turns out great."
"It was easy to focus when everyone was focused. But it was difficult when some of us were not paying attention or when somebody was always playing a game."
"One challenge was trying to work together, and from that, I learned to just relax and listen to what other people have to say.
"Our team was pretty good creativeness. We could of worked on better jobs for people."
"A good thing is that we got a lot done together but the challenge was working together."
"I had a good time together because there were different people with different strengths and weaknesses, so one person was always covering the other persons weakness. For example, _______'s weakness is that she is very… shy? She doesn’t like to be in the spotlight, but _____ does, so _____ had a minimum amount of lines, and ______ had some more lines. :D There was a challenge where we all disagreed on the script, but in the end we sorted it out and we came up with a pretty good script."
"A challenge was working together."
"Working in a group. To work in a group you HAVE TO agree on things."
"We communicated very well in the beginning and the end but we yelled when it came to decisions."
"I would rate my team performance on a scale from 1-10 it would probably be around a seven. What I liked the best was probably the script. I think it was really fun because I love acting. What I would change is the props I would have wanted to practice at least once with the props."
"Our Strengths were we knew how to work well with each other. A challenge was to keep everybody on focus including me."

Comments about Learning

"I learned A LOT more about sea turtles, and now I am so proud of myself."
"I had the challenge of staying on task, I learned that staying on task is good because in the future you need to keep track or you will get behind ."
"I learned how sad it is that people are destroying their homes and killing these amazing animals and that we have to save these animals for many different reasons and I also learned that it can be very difficult to work in a group(I kinda already knew it was hard to work in a group)."

Related Posts