ENABLEMENT OF PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TO REFLECT DURING LESSONS OF THE NATIVE LANGUAGE BY USING ON-LINE SOFTWARE “REFLECTUS”

Abstract

Enablement of primary school students to reflect on their learning during lessons of the native language is an interaction between teacher and children when a teacher using various methods, tools etc. provides possibilities for reflection on the learning. In other words, a teacher provides favourable conditions for this process. Gradually, primary school students start reflecting on their learning; therefore, the role of a teacher who enables them is highly important in this instance. Primary school students who are being enabled to reflect on their learning are encouraged to return in their mind to any situation, activity or task of learning and to try remembering and reflecting on their learning. Introspectively regarding one’s learning, a child is learning to track the process of one’s own intellectual performance and, if necessary, to correct its separate steps.

One of the ways of how children can be enabled to reflect during lessons of the native language is to use on-line software for reflection on the learning. In Lithuania, on-line software for reflection, “Reflectus”, started operating in 2020; the instruments it offers can be used by teachers or they can design and test their own ones. This is a modern and convenient method for a teacher to systematically focus one’s school students to the learning so that they would reflect on their experiences: what they understood, what did not, what they expected, what feelings and emotions they felt etc. In order to better understand who was the author of the initial idea of “Reflectus”, what are the characteristics of using this software and how teachers manage to use it, 6 in-depth interviews (with 5 primary school teachers-methodologists and one member of the “Reflectus” creative team) were carried out and one video recording of a seminar (conducted by the author of the initial idea of the software “Reflectus”) was analysed. The research data was processed by applying the method of thematic analysis. The research results demonstrated that the effect of this software occurred because it was aimed at searching for a convenient way to record children’s reflections and at making it quick, low time consuming to construct further process of learning the native language. This is the software that allows teachers create their own questions that enable reflection and selection of time intervals, i.e. how often the possibilities of “Reflectus” will be used. Using “Reflectus”, specifically with primary school students, teachers face difficulties, i.e. not all children have mobile phones, not all are able to reflect using their phones on their own without being assisted by others and so on, which makes the discussed process more complicated.