End of year reflections are often used by teachers after the testing season winds down and everyone needs a little time to decompress. But it still takes class time to implement it with pen and paper (or digital form!) and the results are often treated like an exit ticket, rather than a thoughtful and insightful measure of learning that took place throughout a year. And more often than not, this data ends up living in a gradebook or a folder, but rarely is it used to help shape a student’s future.
We think end of year reflections with Mirror can motivate students to set better goals, improve their empathy for each other, and more strongly measure a teacher’s impact than other assessment tools. In about one minute per student using Mirror’s AI, teachers are able to identify gaps and opportunities in their student’s abilities and are shown insights into their sentiment, objective understanding, and mental transformations.
So if you think you don’t have time before the year ends to collect this kind of data from reflection alone – think, think, and THINK again, because Mirror makes it possible.
- Set goals and improve resilience
Reflection is a surefire way to get students thinking realistically about their goals for next year and set their own plans into motion to tackle challenges they faced this year. And as their teacher who is sending them off to face those challenges, what if you could pay these insights forward? Imagine sharing with their future teacher a holistic view of every student – not just their test scores – wrapped up in an easy-to-read reflection card in the time it took you to type their email address? With Mirror, you can.
With Mirror’s newest Summative Focus we help students consider their yearlong achievements and their setbacks, and we offer encouraging feedback to keep them feeling motivated and improve their resilience throughout the process. Some example prompts include:
- What did you discover about your learning style or strategies that helped you overcome challenges during projects this year?
- What new strategies or approaches would you like to try in future projects?
- Describe a moment this year when you felt really proud of something you accomplished.
- Build empathy during project-based learning
The end of the school year is the perfect time to have students dive into creative self-led projects in groups. Mirror’s Workspaces guides students through the project, keeps them engaged, and has them reflect in small groups.
When students work in small groups they are exposed to each other’s communication and learning styles and must learn to cooperate. This often means developing a vocabulary that is appropriate to the classroom, and it’s not uncommon for conflict to ensue as a result. However, these group experiences give students invaluable insight into their relationships with other students and sharpens their understanding of the role they play in conflicts.
With Mirror, students can reflect on collaborative projects they participated in, and start considering their classmates’ feelings and perspectives in ways that didn’t seem obvious to them while working together. As a result, reflection can increase empathy in students leading to a stronger, more positive classroom community. Now that’s how you end your school year strong, don’t you think?
- Student insights = your impact
Reflecting with Mirror gives you tailored insights to support your students before they leave your class, and it also helps you realize the enormous impact you made on them throughout the year. Everything your students learned in your class was because of you and the environment you created for them to learn in. And when students reflect on what they learned, you’ll also be able to identify trends in your teaching that you’d like to improve for next year. Through Mirror’s data dashboard, you’ll be able to uncover teaching blind spots and identify where the learning gaps occurred so you can clearly identify areas in your curriculum that you can improve.
Time and energy will always compete for attention in your classroom, but particularly at the end of year when everyone is running short on steam. With Mirror, it’s truly possible to make reflection a part of every learning activity, for every student, every day.
The Mirror demo program
If you’re interested in using Mirror for end of year reflections, you can still try Mirror for 30 days free.