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History Department: Grade 7 students submit the ILRP

January 9, 2024

As our students enter the 7th grade, they are asked to face an increasing number of challenges. This is especially true for history. Not only do they have an increase in class periods each week, but they also face higher requirements in regards to their analytical skills, reasoning ability and critical thinking. One may think that it is impossible to gauge the growth of the students over the course of just one term. However, is possible with the help of the Independent Learning Reflection Portfolio! The Independent Learning Reflection Portfolio (ILRP) is a helpful tool to encourage students to reflect on their experiences, and really analyze their growth over the course of the year.

The ILRP is a collection of students’ works such as projects, Cornell notes and worksheets. Each of these works is followed by a reflection that showcases the students’ growth, progress, and achievements in history class. Students need to reflect on their learning in five dimensions: Critical Thinking, Digital Literacy, Creativity and Originality, Cooperation and Leadership, and Inquiry and Research. In preparing this portfolio, students need to write a reflection on their achievements, they must reason out why they did well, what challenges they encountered and what they feel they need to improve in the future.

This ILRP serves to document the students’ learning experiences. By engaging in regular self-reflection, students can identify their strengths, areas of growth, and set future learning goals. Many students mentioned the project of Pax Romana Festival in their reflections, as it integrated various abilities such as creativity, cooperation, digital literacy, and inquiry. For most students critical thinking is considered to be a challenge, but when provided with the correct framework and tools for self-reflection, they are able to develop the habits of self-reflection. This ILRP serves that very purpose, as it creates a guideline for the students to begin to examine their own learning.

When reading the ILRP submitted by the students, many teachers remarked with pride about the students growth, and were also able to gain better understanding of the problems and difficulties that the students have encountered. In future teaching, the teachers will provide more targeted guidance based on this newfound understanding and support students to become excellent independent learners!

(Written by Liu Chen Pictures by Liu Chen Supervised by Sterling Endersby Edited by Cong Luo, Bianca Noguera)