More specifically, you will:

Right off the bat, let’s address that giant elephant constantly staring you in the face: time. PBL is often seen as too time-consuming to plan or implement. ...

We could focus on smaller, more concise chunks of time, perhaps looking at two to three weeks of standards and seeing what naturally connects for a more authentic set of learning experiences. ...

Not only could collaborating help lighten each of your lesson planning and grading loads, but also it could empower students by highlighting just how real learning can be. Imagine the rewards you’ll gain from collaborating on a project’s creation, coordination, and presentation with colleagues.
2. LEARNING CAN BE MORE TRANSPARENT AND RESPONSIVE FOR STUDENTS
3. PBL STRENGTHENS CLASSROOM CULTURE AND FUNCTION
...When classroom norms and expectations are understood—in most cases cocreated with students—it promotes both clarity and buy-in from the beginning.

In the classroom, this happens when teachers make suggestions for students to use a particular strategy or approach. Teachers guide students through feedback, demonstrating, stimulating, reminding, prompting.

Did you listen to the original audio recording?

Did you note the way they pronounce the words?
How many times did you read loudly the text to rehearse?
How did you manage to read the text in the time period proposed?

 

When I ask students to prepare a text at home I coud ask them in class:

How many times did you read the text?

Did you find difficult words?

So what’s the meaning of…?

What’s the answer for the 1st question?

How did you manage to get their meanings?

Did you like reading the text?

Are there questions you still have?

How did you manage your time?

 Feedback is essential for the further development of students’ SRL skills.
 Some simple and practical ways to recognize students’ SRL skills, as described in tMail (Lombaerts K., et al., 2017).
Systematic observation 

To begin with, a very simple way of recognizing and assessing students’ SRL skills is through systematic observation. The teacher can create specific classroom scenarios and activities that tap self-regulation. During these tasks the teacher notes down students’ behaviour that may indicate self-regulated learning taking place. As part of such observations, students can also be asked how they came up with their answer, what technique did they use to remember information easily, what strategy was used to understand the problem, etc. 
Ask questions

By asking simple and carefully chosen questions and claims about students’ learning habits and learning in general, we can obtain useful information about their SRL skills. 

For example, you can ask students to rate statements on a scale from  “not at all true” to “very true”). See some indicative statements that concern the use of cognitive learning strategies below: 

 When a student rates a certain item with a high value, his/her own understanding or interpretation is that he/she is engaging in this type of activity as a part of learning. A low or mixed rating means that the student either does not do this, does not recognize doing it or sees no value in it.  
 Considering that the answers are affected by the students’ self-understanding of their own behaviour, asking questions is often not sufficient for assessing SRL. However, combined with another method (e.g. observations), students’ answers to question can offer a more comprehensive picture of students’ use and understanding of SRL practices. 

 

Student learning diaries are an excellent way to collect systematic and continuous information about students SRL skills and behaviour. It is also a good way to stimulate students to consider their learning habits and self-regulatory actions more precisely. You can create a clear structure for the diary with open-ended questions and different types of evaluations and/or ratings. You can even include support in there, such as goal setting and planning. 

A diary can start generally by stating a long-term learning goal, followed by smaller sub-goals for the following week and concrete steps to guide their progress. Students can state their mood at that moment, what they plan to learn that day/lesson and the amount of time that they plan to use for working. 

In reflection phase, students can be asked if they achieved their goals and how they succeeded. They can be also asked to elaborate the reasons for success/failure. 

Examples of motivational and cognitive questions that can be added to the diary.

The diaries can offer you as a teacher useful insights into how students are using SRL practices and their own understanding of how they learn. This can give important indications if the development of SRL skills is happening or not and where more work might be needed.

Diversity between pupils regarding prior knowledge, social background, home situation, self-confidence, and self-regulatory skills in general is a key challenging factor for teachers. Furthermore, students’ capacities to self-regulate develop over time, which requires teachers to adapt accordingly. Also, students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds often displayed more difficulties in regulating their task- and goal-orientation compared with their more advantaged peers (Peeters et al., 2016). This means that teachers need to differentiate even more strongly their activities for SRL development, than in their usual teaching practices. This of course increases the complexity and time of preparing activities for SRL development.

Teachers have also reported that learners are sometimes not motivated to learn. They are resistant and over-rely on teachers telling them what to do and what to learn. This means that encouraging students to work and learn in a more ‘active’ way like SRL, turns out to be more complicated as they are used to teachers teaching them what to learn. As a result, students are not used to this method of learning and are often not motivated enough to put as much effort as it requires.

Additionally, teachers’ lack of time, work pressure, and the big group of students that they have to deal with affect significantly the smooth and successful implementation of SRL practice. (Vandevelde et al., 2012). From students’ perspective, it is also challenging to realize SRL practice due to an overloaded curriculum.  

Last but not least, one of the most common challenges that teachers face is practical and material barriers. More specifically, by practical and material barriers we mostly mean fixed time schedules, lack of space and means to integrate SRL such as inappropriate textbooks and media, which hamper the implementation of SRL (Vandevelde et al., 2012). It should also be mentioned here that there is a lack of focus on SRL in the curriculum. As a result, teachers should put extra effort and time to develop and implement SRL in their class.

Firstly, we would need to give sufficient time, not only to our students to develop SRL skills but also to ourselves as teachers to teach those skills, demonstrate them, engage our own self-reflection and try to demonstrate that to the learners, etc. Be gentle to yourself and to your learners and try to incorporate SRL in everything you are doing.
2) Create a safe place

Secondly, another way would be to create a safe place in which failing is part of the learning procedure. In that kind of environment and space, it is more likely to have students not feel bad for expressing themselves and their experiences. Students will not be ashamed to share if they have failed and the reasons why they think they failed. Certainly, in a safe environment where learners share their experiences, all students can benefit from each other’s successes and failures. Creating a safe place would be very beneficial if you are having a mixed group of learners with diverse characteristics as everyone would feel included and safe to share his/her learning journey and emotions.
3) Timely feedback

Support students with timely feedback. Research has shown that feedback helps students improve and overcome difficulties, supports and promotes learning, encourages teacher-student dialogue and fosters positive motivation for enhancing self-esteem and autonomy. Therefore, students are more likely to be more confident in overcoming difficulties and practicing their SRL skills.
4) Self-regulatory competencies

Your own self-regulatory competencies play a crucial role in promoting your students’ SRL. It has been reported that self-related teachers attune their instructional approach to their own SRL skills, better understand SRL processes and become more effective in SRL promotion (Peeters et al., 2013). Students who are not motivated and show lack of interest in learning using their SRL skills might be encouraged to see you provide practical examples through your experience.

Give a brief description of your school and class context. How many students does your class have? Do you have any students with special needs?
Title of the activity

Choose a descriptive or creative title for your learning activity.
Learning objectives

In this section, you need to describe the goals of the activity. For example, “Students will be able to learn/ explore/ identify/ discover/ become familiar with the concept of…”. In this section you also need to indicate which phases and processes of self-regulated learning are targeted through the activity.
Overview of the activity

Please provide us with a short description of the activity in order for the reviewer or reader to understand the general dynamic. You also need to highlight how self-regulated learning will be supported through this activity.
Age of students

Please include information regarding the age of the students or the age range, that this activity is aimed for.
Time of the activity

What is the approximate length of the activity?
Before the activity

Please indicate whether you, as a teacher, or your students need to do any preparation prior to the activity.
During the activity

In this section, you are called to describe what you and your students are doing during the implementation of the activity. Please make sure to provide enough information to the reader and clearly describe the different procedures.
Follow-up activities

In this section you should provide information for the follow-up activities organised for your students. By follow-up activities we mean the tasks that usually come after the main activity such homework, reflection exercises, etc.
Tips and Tools

The last section of the SRL learning activity template consists of two parts, tips and tools. In the first part, try to anticipate possible obstacles to implementing the activity and provide some tips to overcome them. Lastly, you would also need to make a list of tools that you are planning to use.