Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast! It’s May… which means we’re somewhere between still teaching and mentally organizing our classroom for the summer. Have you started counting down the days yet?
If you’re listening in real time, this is also Teacher Appreciation Week.
And I’ll be honest—when I was in the classroom, I remember looking across at the elementary teachers and seeing all the treats and the gifts and the celebrations happening. And sometimes it felt like that kind of recognition didn’t always carry over into the secondary world in the same way.
So I want to take a minute to say this— Thank you for what you do! Thank you for the time and effort you put into getting to know your students and planning thoughtful, engaging lessons. What you’re doing matters.
You are showing up every day, you’re giving it your all, and you are making a difference in the lives of your students. Even on the days when it doesn’t feel like it. Even on the days that feel hard or unproductive. You are making a difference.
And just like it can be hard for us to see the difference we’re making day to day, our students often have a hard time recognizing how much they’ve grown.

So as we’re wrapping up this year, how can we help our students recognize how much they’ve grown? This is the focus of today’s episode.

Because without taking a step back, it’s easy for that growth to go unnoticed.
One way to do this is through reflection, because reflection helps students understand themselves as learners. It gives them a chance to think about what they can do, what has improved, and where they’ve made progress over the year.
Without that kind of thinking, a lot of that growth goes unrecognized. Students may be improving, but they’re not always aware of it and often focus on what still feels difficult instead of noticing what has changed.
When we give students time to reflect, they begin to recognize those changes and see themselves differently. They start to notice how they learn, what helps them make sense of something, and how what they’re doing connects to what they’re able to understand. That awareness builds ownership, because they begin to see themselves as active participants in their learning.
So if we want students to think about their growth, their progress, what does that look like?
It starts with being intentional about how we ask students to reflect. Because reflection can be hard and sometimes uncomfortable, but it can be something students rush through without putting a lot of thought into it.
We’ve all seen it. You ask a question like, “What did you learn this year?” and students give you a short answer, turn it in, and move on.
They’re technically answering the question, but they’re not really thinking about themselves as learners. And part of that is because they’re probably answering that same question in all their classes, so they fall into a pattern of writing what they think they’re supposed to say or what they think the teacher wants to hear, instead of taking the time to think about their own progress.
That’s usually not about effort—it’s about how the question is framed. If it’s too broad, students stay general. If it’s rushed or treated like something to finish at the end of class, students tend to give the first answer that comes to mind instead of really thinking about their experience.
So instead of getting meaningful reflections, we end up with surface-level responses.

When we give students a way to think more specifically about their own experiences and their own growth, you start to see a difference in how they approach the reflection.

I want to walk through five simple ways you can do this with your students over the next week or so—nothing complicated, just small shifts that help students think more intentionally about their growth.

You might start by asking students to think about one thing they’re proud of from this year in your class.

And I like this one because it’s simple.

Some students might immediately know what they want to say, and that’s great. Others may need a little more time to think, and that’s really what I’d like to see. We want students to be thinking about the year, reflecting on what they accomplished.

If needed, you can offer a few examples to get them started like finishing a book they didn’t think they could get through, participating more in discussions, or staying more focused during independent work time, but you want to be careful not to steer their answers.

The goal is for the thinking to come from them, so they’re identifying what actually mattered in their own experience, not just choosing from a list.

When students can name something they’re proud of, it gives them something concrete to hold onto as they leave your class. It starts to shape how they see themselves, not just as students completing work, but as learners who are capable of growth.

Another way to approach reflection is to shift the focus from what students learned to how they learned it.

You might ask students to think about an activity, a routine, or even a habit that helped them learn this year. What helped them to stay focused? What inspired them to continue on when things got difficult?

This is one where a little modeling can help. You might name a few general examples— partner talks, warm ups, independent reading—just to get them thinking. Then follow it up with a simple question: why did that help you?

Students move beyond naming something they did and begin to connect it to their understanding. They start to notice patterns, like realizing that talking through ideas helped them understand a text better, or that writing things out helped them organize their thinking.

That connection is important, because it helps students see that how they approach learning has an impact on what they’re able to understand.

You start to see that self-awareness build.

Students might feel like they’re just completing tasks, but when they take the time to reflect on how those tasks impacted their learning, they start to recognize what works for them as learners and what kinds of activities actually help them understand more.

This next one is something many teachers already do, and it’s always a fun one for students. It’s writing a letter with advice to next year’s class.

Students often see this as a fun activity, but it really is a form of reflection. Because in order to give advice, students have to look back on their own experience. They have to think about what helped them, what challenged them, and what they would do differently.

They’re identifying specific choices and moments from the year, like keeping up with reading, asking questions during discussions, or using their notes when writing, and explaining how those choices impacted their learning.

Students might say things like, “Don’t wait until the last minute to start your reading,” or “If you don’t understand something, ask during discussion because it helps,” or even, “Keep reading, even if you don’t like the book at first, because it usually gets better.”

Those responses are grounded in their own experience. Students are thinking back on moments where something worked, where something didn’t, and where they had to adjust.

As they put that into advice for the next student, they’re making sense of their own learning in a way that feels natural. They’re recognizing what made a difference for them and putting that into words in a way that they can carry with them moving forward.

They may think they’re just telling the next group about you or your class, but what they’re really doing is reflecting on their own learning experience.

Alright, up to this point, students have been thinking more generally about reflection. But, you can take it a step further by asking students to think about specific moments from the year that helped them grow.

You might ask them to identify two or three activities, assignments, or even discussions that made a difference for them.

This is one where it helps to give students a little time to think or even talk it through with a partner first. Because once they start remembering activities, more things will come up. It will be easy to get off task here so be careful about that.

Students might think about a discussion where something finally clicked, a writing assignment that challenged them, or a time when they felt more confident participating than they had before, because those are the moments that stick with them and help them see how they’ve grown.

Once they have an activity or assignment in mind, follow it up with a simple question: how did that help you grow?

This is where the thinking deepens and connection between what I did as a student and what I learned begins to take shape. Students are not just remembering what they did. They’re connecting those experiences to their progress.

Those first four ideas are strong reflection strategies, and they can be used in any class.

But let’s not forget that one of our goals is to help students see themselves as readers.

For this last strategy, let’s bring it back to reading.

You might ask students to think about what kind of reader they were at the beginning of the year and what kind of reader they are now.

This doesn’t need to be long or formal. Even a few sentences can be enough to get them thinking about how they’ve changed over the year. And if you’re teaching 8th grade, you might have students think about it in terms of how they’ve changed since starting middle school.

Some students might realize they didn’t see themselves as readers at the beginning of the year, but now they’ve found a type of book they enjoy. Others might notice they’re more willing to stick with a text, even when it gets challenging, or that they understand more than they used to when they read.

What’s important here is that students are looking at themselves over the year. They’re starting to recognize patterns in how they read, how they respond to texts, and how their thinking has changed.

Seeing themselves differently as readers changes how they approach reading moving forward.

They’re not just completing reading assignments. They’re starting to see themselves as readers who are capable of growth.

That’s really what we want them to leave with. We want students to walk out of our classes recognizing that they’ve grown as readers, that the work they’ve done this year made a difference, and that they are more capable now than they were when they walked in.
Before we wrap up, I want to come back to the idea we started with.
It can be hard for us to see the difference we’re making day to day, and it’s just as hard for students to recognize the growth they’ve made over the year. That’s why reflection deserves some space at the end of the year.
It gives students a chance to step back and see themselves as learners, to recognize what they can do now that they couldn’t do before, and to understand that the choices they made throughout the year had an impact on what they were able to learn.
When students begin to see that connection, they start to take more ownership of their learning. They’re not just completing tasks. They’re understanding that what they do has impact on their own learning.
As we’re finishing out the year, this is an opportunity to help students leave with that understanding.
To help them see that they’ve grown, that their effort made a difference, and that they are more capable now than they were when they walked into your class. And that’s something they can carry with them into the next school year.
All right, everyone, that’s it for today. Thank you for being here and for the work you’re doing with your students.

If this idea of reflection is something you’d like to explore more, I’ll have additional resources in the show notes, including blog posts and classroom resources you can use with your class over the next few weeks as you finish out the year.

I also want to mention that reflection is the focus of our May training inside our free Building Strong, Confident Readers community. If you’re not part of the community, we’d love for you to join us. We have weekly live check-ins where you can come ask questions and get support, along with additional resources you can use in your class.

When you join, you’ll also have access to all of our previous trainings right there in the community.

This is not a Facebook group. It’s a free, private community just for middle school ELA teachers. I hope you’ll decide to join us.

Well that’s all for today, here’s to a great Teacher Appreciation Week! I’ll see you next time.