Student Self-Reflection, Self-Assessment, and Metacognition Using Interactive Slides – Part 4

As we know, Pear Deck and Nearpod can be utilized and integrated into a wide variety of strategies. Student reflection and metacognition strategies are part of this range of strategies! In Part 4 of our Interactive Slide Blog Series, we will cover this in-depth.

Metacognition and Reflection – A Skill Set for Lifelong Learners

As educators, we want our students to be lifelong learners. However, this needs to be something we intend to put into our lessons to practice reflection and metacognition, which is the basis for becoming a lifelong learner. Through metacognition and reflection, students can assess what they learned, their strengths, areas of improvement, and next steps they need to take to extend their learning. 

We can provide these opportunities more than ever on a daily and weekly basis. Thus, what we can do is build self-assessment into all our lessons and units to practice these skills. Our goal in this post is to show you how students practice self-assessment metacognition using interactive slides. Not only does self-assessment give students an opportunity to practice metacognition skills, but it also provides teachers with a plethora of information about our students they can use to become better teachers and learn more about their students, which will bolster their relationships. Overall, the information collected can help teachers learn more about the student’s thoughts regarding what they know, where they need to go, and what areas of strength they feel like they are strong in. Ultimately, this will facilitate dialogue between teachers and students throughout the year to help monitor and adjust our instruction as well as focus on the personalizing learning of our students. 

Note: Here is a provided template for you to copy and paste these slides into your own presentations you are utilizing in your class. Use these for your reference too as you read through this blog. 

Daily Self-Assessment & Reflection

Daily self-assessment is quick, which can be employed during the closure of a lesson. Teachers can pose one to three questions regarding what was covered, student understanding, and areas of strength/improvement for students to interact with and think about. We can use Pear Deck or Nearpod for my interactive slideshows so I can have active engagement throughout my entire lesson. Ultimately, at the end of most of my lessons,  we can provide students an opportunity to think about what they have learned. This provides students an opportunity to practice metacognition and gives me quick feedback on where my students believe they are currently at on the skills or content discussed during that class period. Below, there are three examples of how you can utilize interactive slides for reflection at the end of your lesson as an exit ticket. 

Weekly Self-Assessment & Reflection

Weekly self-assessment allows students to practice metacognition skills by allowing them to summarize what they have learned throughout the week as well as narrow down areas of strength and areas of improvement. In addition, a weekly self-assessment gives students an opportunity to give themselves self-reported grades on their reading, writing, math, participation, and work completion. By providing students an opportunity to self-report their progress and grades, it can allow teachers to have a dialogue with students thereafter to facilitate conversation about their strengths and areas they can improve in. For the weekly self-assessment, we can utilize either an interactive slide or Google Forms for a weekly self-assessment because sometimes we can provide multiple choice and free response reflection questions for my students. Also, the data output from Google Forms is extremely valuable because it allows me to analyze individual and class trends over the course of a semester versus the readout from a single lesson using Pear Deck or Nearpod. Below you will see how you can use interactive slides as well as a Google Form for students to interact with while they reflect. This can be done at the end of your lesson at the end of the week. 

Conclusion – Implementing Self-Assessment & Reflection Builds Relationships

Regardless of the content you are teaching your students, provide them an opportunity to self-reflect, self-assess, and self-report grades because it gives them a multitude of opportunities throughout the year to practice metacognition and reflection. Metacognition allows our students to become lifelong learners, which builds their self-efficacy and confidence to think about or dialogue with others about their abilities and skillsets. Furthermore, we want our students to consistently look to grow and improve. By focusing on practicing metacognition throughout the year, it gives your students an opportunity to do this. On the teacher side of the equation, teachers have the opportunity to review this data and learn more about their students than ever before besides our student-to-teacher-to-student relationship, evaluating student work artifacts, and analyzing assessment scores. Evaluating the self-assessment data is critical in focusing on improving your instruction for all of your students and personalizing learning for your students by conversing with your students to work on improving gaps in their learning and making their strengths shine.