Reflection Bingo: A Strategy for Reflection, Connection, and Sharing

My district is one of the lucky districts that had the week before Christmas off (shopping was completed, parties attended, and I was rested!) which meant that we had to return the day after New Year for our professional learning. As the person kicking off our staff for a day of learning, I wanted to make sure that I was helping everyone to start in a positive and productive mood.  To that end, the idea for reflection bingo was born. 

I am a fairly reflective person and I have seen a lot lately about the oneword2018 hashtag. I've seen "one word" language used a lot in the last couple of years, and to be honest, I am somewhat resistant to it right now. As someone who is always stretching and trying to find new possibilities in so many corners of my life, I find the idea of one word to be very limiting. At the same time, I will also admit that while I find it limiting, some people find it very freeing in that it helps to provide focus and direction. So, no judgement, just not my preference for reflection and goal setting right now.

All of my personal wrestling aside, I wanted something that would not just reflect my own thoughts of the moment, but the thoughts of my facilitators as well. This reflection idea was built around the need to provide choice for my staff to reflect on those things that matter most to them right now. I also wanted something that would be interactive and collaborative so that our facilitators could learn from each other.

Here was the idea: I created a bingo reflection card for the staff that had 25 reflection questions. The questions were broken up into categories so that staff could have a framework for the reflection. The categories I chose were: personal, newtechiness (a word I'm using to refer to high quality PBL practices in line with our New Tech Network), overall year as an educator, educator as collaborator, and day in the life of an educator. If you want to see what I came up with (it isn't perfect and feel free to adapt it), you can access it here

How to play the game:


After I shared this with my staff, a pair of our Rookie (freshman) facilitators decided to adapt the bingo card and use it with their learners. The results can be seen in these tweets:




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