Wendy Miller has spent nearly 30 teaching Special Education, so she knows a thing or two about differentiating support for her learners. Enter Wendy’s classroom and you’ll find a vast wonderland of multi-modal interactive tools to offer engagement and stimulation. She has robotics, lego systems, and sensory stations galore. What she didn’t have was a way for her students to reflect on their learning in a format that was comfortable for them and scalable for her. That is until she had them reflect with Mirror.

In the past, student reflection in Wendy’s classroom was something only possible to observe on the spot – during verbal, one-on-one conversations with each of her 12 students. However, this method had significant limitations, especially for her students with autism. These students’ interpersonal dialogue is often mired by their extreme anxiety or challenging articulation. While Wendy has built a strong rapport with each of her students with autism, it was almost impossible for her to immediately spot each student’s specific learning gaps.

A verbal reflection tool 

When Wendy was first introduced to Mirror by Swivl, she thought it could be a viable solution to alleviate pressure for her students to communicate, but she couldn’t imagine the impact it would have within her classroom.

Mirror has enabled her students with autism to be more open and expansive than ever before about what they’re learning.

“I hear much better language samples when they use Mirror than when we talk face-to-face, which has been so powerful. Even my students with the most challenging articulation, Mirror seemed to know what they were saying. I was so impressed because most people cannot even understand what the child is trying to say, and here’s a solution that not only understands what they’re saying, it is also helping me identify learning gaps.”

Time-saving insights 

Wendy’s students, on average, spend two minutes at Mirror reflecting on a lesson. Mirror’s AI then synthesizes the student’s response for understanding, mindset, and social-emotional wellness, saving Wendy up to 20 minutes per day, per student. These instantaneous insights are helping Wendy streamline time spent tracking longer-range goals so she can instead focus on sustaining the core relationships she has built with each student.

“I work with my students for three or four years before they move on so I really get to see how they can grow and change, but these reflections give me more specific data to address their IEP goals and define the next step in their communication and their interactions for their social-emotional learning goals as well.”

Elevating student feedback 

For Wendy, Mirror is the ultimate integration of social emotional learning, academics, and technology. Now she relies on Mirror to elicit higher quality reflections from her students and the data that Mirror extracts from each reflection reveals the hidden lessons they are really experiencing in her class. And for the first time, she has been able to provide her students with the kind of specific and individualized feedback that every learner – on the autism spectrum or not – deserves.

“Normally we just say ‘good job,’ and we move on but can’t go much deeper than that. With the data and feedback that Mirror’s dashboard provides, I can help them improve their grammar, use of adjectives, and level of detail in their responses. It’s been so powerful to really help each child improve their speech.”

Try Mirror, commitment-free, with your students

Interested in finding out what hidden lessons your students are experiencing in your class? You can sign up to demo Mirror for 30-days, free.

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