How to Guide Students in Self-Reflection During a Project (Read and Watch)

Today, we’re going to explore this idea of self-reflection.

Self-Assessment Is Critical for Metacognition

I believe that peer feedback is critical for students. Part of this is the nature of peer interactions. Peers are often able to share their thoughts in a more relatable way than teachers. Another part is simply the time limits that teachers have. Even with student conferencing, teachers can only offer so much immediate feedback. With quality peer feedback, students can get an extra pair of eyes to figure out what they need to do next. However, it’s also important that students own this process individually through self-assessment. This can help students develop metacognition.

Metacognition is a vital soft skill for students. If we want students to develop into critical thinking, lifelong learners, we need them to develop metacognitive skills. Metacognition is vital for helping students become self-directed learners (both self-managers and self-starters). It will help them navigate the complexities of a changing world and it will help them as they engage in creative work.

The authors of How Learning Works describe metacognition as a cycle. Check it out in the video below.

When students engage in meaningful self-assessment, they improve in their metacognition. They’re able to determine what they know, what they don’t know, and what steps they need to take next.

Short Frequent Self-Reflections

When I first began implementing project-based learning with students, I made the mistake of incorporating student reflection at the end of the project but never really integrating it into the daily lessons. Students would do a long, multi-paragraph reflection as a way to process what they learned. Most students hated it for a few reasons. First, it was too long and skewed heavily into open-ended writing. Also, they couldn’t really do anything with their reflections. After all, the project was finished.

I started thinking about my own projects. I’m reflecting all the time during the process. Sometimes these reflections are written. Sometimes I reflect by sketching out ideas on a sketchnote. Sometimes I journal. But other times, I merely think and reflect and then move on. So, I changed my approach to include frequent, shorter, self-reflections with students. Here are some examples of the methods:

• Silent reflections: Sometimes all students need is a quick silent reflection. You can pause the class for two minutes and ask students to think about a particular prompt.
• Open-ended writing: Students can write out their reflections in an open-ended way. Think of it as a stream of consciousness where the focus is on the thinking and not the quality of writing.
• Lists: While we tend to view written reflections as paragraphs, sometimes students might write out their reflections as a list. An example would be something like, “Write out three things you have learned about yourself so far in this project?” or “What are two takeaways from today and one question you have?”
• Surveys: Sometimes students struggle with open-ended prompts. With surveys, students can select from checkboxes (i.e. how are you feeling about this), give short numerical answers, or select categories that allow them to rate how they are doing. It’s a more structured, quantified way of doing self-reflection.
• Sketch out your thinking: This is a silent form of reflection, where students sketch out what they are thinking. One of my favorite options is a handout of a mind and the prompt, “Sketch what’s going on in your mind right now as you think about this project.”
• Rubrics: We tend to use rubrics at the end of a project but they can serve as a great way to guide students in reflecting on their work as they compare their current work to the rubric criteria and then diagnose potential issues and plan new strategies.
• Checklists: We don’t tend to think of checklists as a form of reflection but they allow you to reflect on how you’re doing, which can then help you set new goals or determine next steps.
• Progress bars: Students fill out progress bars, where they shade a bar or a set of circles that represent their progress on a project. This might be their progress toward mastery in learning or it might be their progress toward completing tasks. We use progress bars all the time in life. If you’ve ever seen the movement circles on an Apple Watch or the progress bars in online forms, you’ll notice just how prevalent they are in reflecting on your sense of progression.

By having students reflect more frequently with shorter reflections, they begin to internalize self-reflection as a natural, integrated part of doing creative work.

Types of Reflections

There are so many different areas where students can self-reflect and each time they engage in this self-reflection, they are growing more self-aware and self-directed in their learning. Here are a few of the areas where you might guide students in self-reflection:

• Reflecting on learning: Students reflect on their mastery toward the standards, their growth in the learning, and what skills they have learned. They might also reflect on what key concepts or content they have learned through the project.
• Reflecting on goals: Students set goals and reflect on their mastery toward their goals. The types of goals can skew more toward learning / mastery goals or they could be project goals (such as deadlines).
• Reflecting on project progress: Students determine where they are in their progression toward meeting key deadlines and finishing specific tasks in their project.
• Reflecting on the creative process: Students reflect on every aspect of the project process. Instead of focusing on the quality of their product, they focus on the journey and the process.
• Reflecting on the product: Students look at their work and reflect on the quality of their product. It could be the quality of resources in their research, the quality of ideas during ideation, or the quality of their prototype. Whatever it is, the focus here is on the product.
• Reflecting on group dynamics: This is a chance for students to reflect on the collaborative process and consider how the group is working together.
• Reflecting on their soft skill development: Students consider how they are changing as a result of the project and what soft skills they are gaining. It might be communication, creativity, critical thinking, or any other key soft skill. They might do an open-ended reflection or a survey.
• Reflecting on their social-emotional learning: Projects can be a great way to build SEL and reflections can help solidify these lessons as students think through what they are learning and how it applies to life outside of school.

Notice that these areas often overlap. For example, if a student does a survey on creative risk-taking, they might answer a question about group dynamics and groupthink avoidance but also reflect on their growth mindset (reflecting on social-emotional learning), their ideation process (reflecting on the creative progress) and on their divergent thinking (reflecting on soft skill development). The category isn’t important. What matters is that students are engaged in frequent self-reflection in every aspect of their learning.

This week, the first free download is this set of 10 reflection questions.

 Download the 10 Self-Reflection Questions

When students do multiple projects, you can take self-reflection to the next level with portfolio projects. Here’s a snapshot of what that looks like.

You can download the student portfolio project below.

 Download the Digital Portfolio Project