For the last few years I have had more than one blog, the other one being mainly used with my students. However, there are some posts I wrote which I don’t want to lose so I will be re-posting them here with a view to closing down the other blog in time. I think some of these posts bear a second reading anyway!
The following post dates back to 19 November 2014. I continued to use the CSI reflection for poetry, as well as other units and it always produced interesting results.
Oh, I love visible thinking, particularly for reflections. One of my favourites, which works especially well for a poetry unit, is Colour Symbol Image, CSI. Today my grade 8 class used this to reflect on our unit about Identity, and the depth of reflection is something you would not get with a written reflection.
In the past I’ve had some other wonderful reflections, too, such as an exploding head because “Sometimes when you are thinking of a meaning in the poem, it is really hard it makes my head EXPLODE!!!!!!!!!!”; one student chose light blue as his colour because “I have not learnt western poetry before, but I feel comfortable learning that; blue stands for happiness, because poetry is beautiful, and I can see nice pictures presented in poetry. But light blue means that I can’t understand English and emotions of poets sometimes”; another chose green which was explained as “There are many different kinds of green: blue- green, jade, apple green, dark green, British Racing Green. This makes me realise that it’s all about perspective – we don’t always see things the same way, and yet there are essential similarities. Culture and poetry are like that: we view them differently depending on our perspective and the way we interpret things and yet there are essential elements which are the same.”
I’ve used other reflections in other units but for poetry I have found this the most successful.
Visit the Visible Thinking website for more details.
I remember learning this routine from you, I have used it with many classes since.