Learning to reflect is a critical component for social-emotional development. It can help build skills for self-awareness, understanding emotions, confidence, self-advocacy, problem-solving, and gratitude. Reflecting together as a class also helps build community, as students are growing, learning, and improving together.
What is an end-of-the-day reflection?
During the last few moments of the school day, kids and teens can reflect on how their day went. That includes thinking about what tasks they accomplished, identifying how they felt, recognizing what problems they solved on their own, considering ways to improve the following day, and taking time to show gratitude.
Some options for how to run an end-of-the-day reflection in the classroom include:
- Have students choose one question and journal about it for the last few minutes.
- Give one specific end-of-the-day question and have each student share their answer aloud.
- Have students choose any question from the list to answer aloud and discuss.
One more note: It’s important to keep the focus positive. While it’s always helpful to identify areas to improve and grow for the following day, it is extremely important that kids and teens recognize the positives each day too. Kids and teens do great things every single day. The more they see and recognize the good in themselves, the better they will do.
End-of-the-day Reflection Posters
If this is a practice you want to try with your learners, you can use these free end-of-the-day reflection posters. They are filled with meaningful questions for kids and teens to discuss at the end of their school day (or their day at home).
Reflection Questions:
- What are you proud of yourself for today?
- What did you accomplish today?
- What did you learn today?
- What inspired you today?
- What is something kind you’ve seen today?
- What strengths did you use today?
- What challenges did you overcome?
- What was your favorite activity?
- What made you feel happy today?
- What are you grateful for?
- How did you make others feel today?
- What positive choices did you make today?
- How did you give back to the world today?
- What made you smile today?
- How did you show honesty today?
- How did you show kindness today?
- How did you show integrity today?
- How did you grow your brain today?
- What goals did you work on?
- What lessons did you learn?
- What was the best thing that happened today?
- How did you make your future self proud?
- How were you a good friend to others?
- How did you show kindness to yourself?
- How did you show your best self today?
- How could you do even better tomorrow?
- What do you look forward to tomorrow?
Give end-of-the-day reflection questions a try in your classroom! Remember to grab your free printable lists to help you get started.
Check out these other social-emotional ideas and strategies for your classroom:
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