3 Student Self-Reflection Strategies After They Finish an Assignment

Last year, I had a student who, according to our classroom learning data, was thriving. Over the course of several writing assessments, this student’s growth was substantive; by March, they had earned one of the highest scores in the entire class.

After I gave the student encouraging feedback on that high-scoring essay, I read their self-reflection. “Dang,” they wrote later that day. “I really thought I did better this time. Sometimes I have a hard time taking feedback, and this is one of those times.”

I realized there was a disconnect between how I saw this student’s learning journey and how they saw their own journey. This led to a fantastic in-person conference with the student’s family. We discussed how the student was doing and what success looked like to them. They ended the year feeling much more secure and confident.

That intervention and conversation never would have happened without our classroom system of self-reflection, which allows for a more authentic understanding of how students perceive their progress. Any step in the direction of more student reflection is a win—for you as a teacher and for your students as learners.

Below are three self-reflection strategies I regularly use to make sure I have a solid grasp on how my students are doing and what I can do to further assist them. They’re listed in order from least to most comprehensive. Each strategy works great on its own, but utilizing one doesn’t preclude the use of another.

Strategy 1: End-of-Task Confidence Scale

This scale is remarkably simple to add to your teaching practices, and it’s also surprisingly transformative.

All it entails is inserting one final question into daily assignments or tasks that you’re having students complete. The question is as follows: On a scale of 1 to 5, how confident do you feel about your performance? Explain.

Adding this question gives teachers immediate feedback while reviewing student work. There are two major takeaways from student responses:

1. How close is student confidence to student performance? For example, do you have lots of students who are marking higher levels of confidence (a 4 or 5) but not demonstrating a mastery of their learning?

2. What are the overall confidence levels of the class? In some cases, you may find that students are less confident than what their performance would suggest.

Along with supplying important information to teachers, this simple question helps students hone their metacognitive reflection skills. Almost like a well-designed speed bump for a driver, the confidence scale offers students a chance to pause and consider their own perspective and thoughts about a task before moving on to something else.

Strategy 2: Strength and Growth Area Reflections

When it comes to slightly weightier summative tasks, I like to have students reflect on, then identify, both a strength and a growth area before submitting their work.

Similar to the end-of-task confidence scales, these reflections add an extra step that compels students to think metacognitively about their performance. For students who are already stressed with other classwork or responsibilities, it can be tempting to just click “Submit” and advance to the next item on their list. I really try to create time in class for students to go through the final reflection process, so it’s given the space and importance it deserves.

I’ve found that self-reflections are invaluable in helping me move through my own feedback process, where I’m assessing what students prioritized in a lesson plan, compared with my own intentions around what they should prioritize.

One example: As an English teacher, I’ve noticed that students sometimes focus too much on things like conventions (“I know I struggle with comma splices”) and end up missing bigger-picture priorities like developing an argument or establishing a line of reasoning across their writing. Once I’ve identified a misalignment, I can have important conversations with students about what I’m seeing and how we can get closer to the same takeaways. On the other side of the coin, I love to celebrate with students when their self-reflections match my own feedback. A strong, precise understanding of one’s writing strengths and growth areas is a major asset into adulthood.

Strategy 3: Build a System of Reflection

The last step I’ve taken in recent years is to design a complete system through which students can collect their reflections over the entirety of a course.

At the beginning of the school year, I create a Google Doc for each student and share it with them so they can add to it. The document has a row for each major summative assessment, with a column for students to reflect on their process (before they get my feedback) and takeaway (after they’ve read through my feedback).

This document becomes a ritual of sorts in our classroom. On the day students submit their work, they add to their process reflection box and discuss with classmates how they felt at that point. There’s some overlap with the strength and growth areas reflection strategy, but only slightly—these process reflections are more about working through the challenges and feelings that often accompany a major writing assignment. Then we repeat the same steps on the day that students receive feedback from me; they break down how they’re feeling about their grade and my notes, as well as how my notes compared with their own initial thoughts and sentiments. The purpose here is for students to spend time considering what they want to take away from their overall experience as learners.

Though it takes some setup work on the front end, I really have fallen in love with this system for three reasons:

1. Having student reflections in one place is really helpful for teachers. At any point in the school year, I’m a few clicks away from understanding how students see their own growth in our course. This lens is critical, I’d argue, in obtaining a more holistic view of a student’s learning journey, rather than simply relying on traditional quantitative measures like grades and test scores.

2. It creates a one-stop shop for student learning. Students hyperlink their work into the Google Doc, which means that they can access all of their significant learning tasks along with their own reflections about how they did for each task—a very helpful “portfolio” for future years, too, to make sure the learnings stick.

3. It’s a great entry point for conversations. When family conferences begin, this Google Doc is often the first thing I pull up. Students lead off the discussion by reading aloud from the document, recapping how they feel about their learnings. I’ve also found that spending time with these reflection documents makes for a great space of closure at the end of each semester.