What's your rose, thorn, and bud this year?

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Whether you're reflecting on your teaching, or reflecting on life, use one of our favorite reflection prompts: rose, thorn, bud. Try this simple discussion prompt from Powerful Teaching with your students, in professional development, and over the dinner table. Enjoy!

What's your rose, thorn, and bud?

 
 

In Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning, we've dedicated two entire chapters to professional development – empowering you to create your own powerful workshops at your school, college, or university.

One of our favorite discussion prompts is rose, thorn, bud:

  • Rose: What is one success you’ve experienced?

  • Thorn: What is one challenge you’ve experienced?

  • Bud: What is one new idea you have?

It's a simple approach to discussing what's going well in the classroom, what could be improved on, and one "budding" idea to explore. To get a little "meta," reflecting with rose, thorn, bud also engages you in retrieval practice, spacing, and metacognition – boosting your own learning in the process!

In Chapter 11 of Powerful Teaching (Powerful Professional Development for Teachers and Leaders), we provide a step-by-step plan for developing a workshop at your own school with even more discussion prompts, including "start, stop, keep," your "now and next," and "challenge, power, action."

In Chapter 12, we created a Do It Yourself (DIY) Retrieval Guide – full of more than 100 discussion questions for book studies and faculty learning communities. We've done the work for you, so you can focus on unleashing the science of learning and transforming teaching.

Liza Coffman, an educator attending the 2019 Learning & the Brain Conference in Boston, tweeted that she uses rose, thorn, bud with her family.

Use rose, bud, thorn at your school to engage everyone in learning, remembering, and retrieving. What's your rose, bud, and thorn this year? Comment below and let us know!