Student Reflection

An integral part to my students learning is reflecting on their learning journey. This allows them to see their growth, strength, proud moments, and areas to improve on. We set achievable goals, monitor achievement, and self-assess our learning. In my class we do this in a variety of different ways. For instance we have learning reflection journals, we post our work to our Freshgrade portfolio and describe our learning intentions, the process of learning, our achievements/results, I can statements, we use the Show Me App to share how we arrived at our results/answers. We also conference about our learning. I hold monthly open houses to invite parents, caregivers, student support systems to come in to our classroom and spend some time in my students shoes, to admire students learning and work, and learn ways to support their students learning at home. As you can see student reflection takes on many different forms and evolves over the year. The beginning of the year starts with lots of modelling and teacher support, and prompts for students to learn what it means to be reflective about their learning, and language to use. By the end of the year it seems to be second nature, and morphs more into using more technology. Below I have posted some of the Student Reflection and Learning Journal Prompts I have available for students to reference. I've compiled this list after discussion and colleague collaboration and sharing what we use in our learning communities. Also I have found that on Freshgrade it is helpful for parents to have some examples of questions to help facilitate Conversations with students about their learning. See below for some parent with student conversation starters. Also most recently I have added some prompts that I use to write in students CSL profile to prompt authentic student discussion about their learning.

*Thanks to collaboration with teacher colleagues some of the following prompts are great ways to start learning journey discussions.*

Learning Journals: 

Some prompts you may want students to have for reference throughout the year are

Goal Setting:

What do you want to do?

How are you going to do it?

Did you do it?

How did you do?

How are you going to challenge yourself?

What is an area you are going to focus on for improvement?

Reflection Journal:

What is something you learned/ improved on/ can demonstrate this week?

What is something you are proud of learning, and why?

The hardest thing for me was?

A goal I accomplished this week is

A piece of work I liked/am proud of this week is________________________ because

Something I learned this week is ______________________

I showed growth this week_________________________

I improved this week on ________________________________

One thing I am working on improving is ___________________

I learn best when _________________________

I need to go over __________________________

I can do better by ________________________

I can help others by ______________________

I should/shouldn't________________

I did the best I could do by _________________

Some of the learning strategies I used

I know ________________ because____________

Freshgrade Reflections:

The learning intention was:

What am I learning?

Where am I in my learning? 

I learned that to be successful, I need to:

I want you to notice:

I showed growth on

One thing I am working on improving is

I am proud of

I noticed improvement

I am finding it easier/harder to

Some of the learning strategies I used were

Something I would change is:

My goal for next time is:

What do I still need to work on?

What do I need to do to next and why?

How am I going to move forward in my learning?

I used to do this…now I do this…

STEM Challenge Reflections:

How could this challenge apply or be use in a realistic situation?

What was your design or plan?

In your next design what would you do different, want to try or change about the challenge?

If you worked with partners or groups, evaluate how well you cooperated and worked together as a team? How was your communication? 

What surprised you about this challenge?

What if any frustrations did you have with this challenge?

What do your think was the purpose of doing this stem challenge?

What did you notice in the designs that worked well, and didn't work well?

What were the materials you used in your project?

Parent Freshgrade Conversation Starters:

Here are some questions you may want to ask your child to have a conversation about their learning:

1. Tell me about the best part of your school day?

2. What was the most challenging thing you had to do today or learn and why was it challenging?

3. Tell me about what you read in class. Did you have any questions about what you read?

4. Who did you play with today? What did you play?

5. Do you think any subject or task today was too easy or too hard?

6. What's the biggest difference between this year and last year? What are some of the new things you are learning about, or building on from last year.

7. Can you show me something you learned (or did) today? Teach me something you learn't

8. What is something you are proud of today?

9. Have you noticed improvement in any of your subjects?

10. Is there anything math games or learning games we could play together?

11. What is new on your Freshgrade, lets look through it together.

Teacher Freshgrade Conversation Prompts

This year I have been doing a lot more commenting on students freshgrade activities to prompt them to think critically and reflect on their learning. A few questions I have asked students that lead to authentic learning journey conversations are 

What are some strategies you have you tried in your learning?

Have those strategies made a difference?

How do you know?

Where are you in your learning journey?

Where does your focus need to be?

Are you motivated about what you are learning?

What do you want to learn more about? 

What are some questions you have about your learning?

How are you challenging yourself/ going to challenge yourself?