What? So What? Now What?

Activity Summary

This simple reflection-activity allows the students to reflect upon what they have learned on 3 levels: What?, So What?, Now What?

This exercise is meant to support the students in landing and anchoring their individual learning from their previous work, and setting them up for new learning moving forward. In this way the activity is focused on the past – what has happened and what they have learned and how they have developed and finally asks the students to look forward based on their reflective insights that they have gained from the exercise.

Activity Plan

5 mins

Draw out the 3 WHAT statements somewhere all of the students can see them.While you draw – ask the students to take something to write on and with, and then ask them to form a circle with their chairs, and leave one for you to sit on as well. Frame that this is a short reflection session, where the students will reflect upon the topic taught on multiple levels and relate it to their own lives using the tool ‘WHAT?’ – ‘SO WHAT?’ – ‘NOW WHAT?’ to reflect.

5 mins

When you are all seated in the circle – ask the students to think back on what they have just been through, have them take 5 minutes for themselves to note down (in any format they like) their intuitive answers to the following questions:

WHAT?

What happened in the process/topic-period I have just been in? What events took place? What actions were taken?

SO WHAT?

So what was easy, challenging, moving, difficult, etc. about this? So what felt important and not important to me that happened? So what insights can I gain from this?

NOW WHAT?

Now what can I bring with me moving on from this? (learning, actual things I did, etc.) Now what is something I would benefit from letting go of as I am moving forward? Now what can I change/improve about how I work and my own attitude moving forward?

30 sec

Let the students know that the time has passed, and ask them to look around and look each other in the eyes for 30 seconds.

10 mins

Take a round where each student gets to share their answer to the last “NOW WHAT?” question

Tips & Tricks

Try to invite the students to move through these 3 stages of reflection:
What? = An objective review of what took place, factual – what objectively happened?
So what? = A more subjective and analytical exploration of the implications, sense making
Now what? = A look at how the lessons learned can be carried forward, looking forward, how might we use this, what did we learn from this, next steps – In the case that the sharing is too intense for the students in a circle, consider making the students move after their reflection and share in pairs – e.g. make them share their reflections on a “walk and talk”.

Additional Resources

https://www.experientiallearning.org/blog/what-so-what-now-what-reflection-model-and-reflection-questions/

If you are curious about reading more about the tool and to get inspired by other potential questions, see: https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/what-so-what-now-what

Up to 30 minutes

Evaluate, Synthetise & Analyse

Class, Individual

Setup and materials

Chairs in a circle, Pens and papers

Intended Learning Outcomes

Evaluating individually

Reflect on multiple levels and make meaning out of learning - also on a personal level

Deep connection (through prolonged eye contact)

Practising bringing a constructive mindset into their reality

Pillars insight

Co-creation

This activity acknowledges your shared learning journey, and fosters connection and constructivism to move on together as a stronger learning force than you were before you started the learning journey.

Well-being

In this activity the students go from reviewing what they have just experienced from an “objective” point of view, to an “analytical” subjective point of view to a “constructive” point of view. The activity helps for clearer and better decision making, and can be used in life in general.

Reflection and personal meaning making out of the content learned in the topic, gives a greater sense of personal relating to the topic, which might lead to higher sense of meaning and ownership of learning.

Print or download

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