As part of our deep dive into the first National Board World Language Standard, I’ve talked in two of my last posts about the student and parent surveys I use to gather up information about students at the beginning of the year. The weakness of those types of surveys is that they are generally one and done. A tool I’ve used to gather information about students throughout the year is the post-unit reflection form.

The post-unit reflection is a survey that I give after our summative assessment at the end of each unit. This is what the kids work on after they turn in their assessments. Usually given as a Google Form, it has three parts:

1) Where do you think you are based on our learning objectives?

In the first section I ask students to rate themselves on the can dos for the unit they just finished (as a self-post-assessment) and on the can dos for the next unit (as a self-pre-assessment). I ask them to rate themselves on a sliding scale: I can’t do this at all yet; I can only do this with a lot of help from my notes; I can do this pretty easily, maybe with a little help from my notes; I can do this and teach someone else how to do it. Doing this keeps kids focused on the things they are, in fact, learning how to do, and they get a sneak peek of the things they’ll be learning how to do next. I find it keeps all of us honest and focused on what our goals are.

Also, giving out this survey as a Google Form gives you a lot of very specific data about each objective and each student. There’s a ton you can do with it. You can see the trouble spots from the unit you just finished that you’ll need to integrate more practice on, and you’ll see the goals that kids are already familiar with for the next unit. You can also pick up on the outlier students: who is struggling and needs to come in for extra help, and which students you can tap to help out the kids who are having trouble. You also might pick up on kids who aren’t giving themselves enough credit; if a student self-evaluates way lower than what you know they can do, it gives you an opportunity to give them a little pep talk.

2) Let’s reflect on how you’re learning.

The second part of the survey contains a few metacognitive questions. I’ll ask which activities helped them learn the most and the least for that particular unit. Sometimes I’ll do this as a multiple choice question listing the main learning activities for that unit and sometimes I’ll just keep it open-ended. This is a huge help for me to check in with them about which tools and lessons are working and which aren’t so that I can adjust my practice accordingly.

I’ll also ask each kid to tell me what they’ve done well this unit and what they want to improve upon for next unit. Usually I do this by asking them to think about the goal they had for learning Spanish at the beginning of the year. With that goal in mind, I’ll ask them what they did well on the way to their goal and what they could do better. This helps me to celebrate everyone’s successes and also gives everyone a chance to grow, going into that growth mindset message that no matter where they are grade-wise, there’s something they’re doing well and something more they could be doing.

3) What information do you want me to know?

In the last section I’ll include a couple open ended questions like “What is the most important thing you’d like me to know about you today?” or “What comments or concerns do you have about Spanish class this month?” You’ll get answers like “I’m stressed about soccer tryouts” or “I really hated that project we did last week.” Not every comment is going to be positive, but you’ll be learning a lot about your kids and your instruction as you go through this exercise.

Concluding thoughts

I find the post-unit reflection to be a very useful pause for me and my students to self-evaluate. For the students, it gives them a chance to reflect on their learning and keep our learning objectives in mind. For me, it helps me to keep my finger on the pulse of how my kids are feeling and to know how to better tweak my instruction moving forward. If you’d like to adapt this practice for your own classroom, you can make a free copy of an editable Google Form template here.