The Missing Question in Teacher Reflection: What Went Right?

To improve my instructional practice and better serve my students, I engaged in intentional teacher reflection strategies over the past 18 months. At first, it was easy to identify what I was doing wrong and the areas where I needed to improve. However, after a few months of approaching reflection this way, I was still not seeing the improvement I wanted in my students’ writing artifacts. Many of my students were still struggling to include details and transfer their oral vocabulary into their writing.

Then I realized I was missing an important question: What am I doing right?

That was when my reflection began to shift, as I could see both the areas where I wanted to grow and the areas where I was already growing. I began paying close attention to what I did well and, just as important, why it worked.

Here are the four different teacher reflection strategies that I used.

1. Keep a Reflection Journal

A reflection journal can be as simple as a bullet journal, notebook, or calendar. I would write two to five sentences about what worked, what did not, and what I learned. Think of it as running anecdotal notes, but for your own teaching day.

Some days it was about a lesson that landed differently than I expected, a student response that made me rethink something, or a teacher move I wanted to remember and use again. Over time, those small notes gave me a record of my growth and helped me notice patterns that were difficult to see when I was simply moving from one busy school day to the next.

For instance, after my gradual release mini-lesson and during our 45-minute writing block, my students were able to identify the characteristics of grade-level writing orally and through examining grade-level exemplar writing. Yet, they failed to produce grade-level writing of their own. My reflection journal helped me recognize this and prompted me to explore methods of improving student understanding.

2. Reflect at the End of Lessons

This one was a little more time-consuming, but it was well worth it. I chose to reflect on the lessons I wanted to improve, which for me were my writing lessons. I found that it worked best during a prep period or at the end of the day, when I had enough space to really think. I reflected on my teacher moves, student engagement, the amount of cognitive lift that students were doing compared with the amount of support I was providing, and the overall organization and delivery of the content.

Instead of simply asking, What worked and what did not? I tried to go deeper. Why did that part of the lesson work? What did I do that contributed to it? What did students’ responses tell me about what they understood? That deeper reflection helped me maintain what was working in future lessons. It also taught me more about my students and gave me a much more well-rounded picture of the kind of teacher I am.

3. Make a List of Wins

This could be a vision board of wins or even a brag list. This was hard for me. I don’t know about you, but I struggle to celebrate myself. As teachers, we can become so accustomed to looking for the next area of growth that recognizing what we already do well can almost feel uncomfortable. But for the first time with this intentional reflection, I was purposefully identifying moments when my teaching worked.

I thought about the gradual release English Language Development (ELD) lesson where students began the day answering questions with only “because,” but by the end of the lesson they were able to form complete responses in both written and verbal form. I thought about the math talk where I intentionally created space for student voice using sentence stems and began watching students take on more of the cognitive lift themselves.

Writing these moments down wasn’t about pretending every lesson was perfect but was about collecting evidence that growth was already happening, both in my students and in me.

4. Record Yourself Teaching

This became one of my favorite reflection practices, but it also required the most vulnerability. I propped up my camera and recorded myself teaching. I filmed my writing lessons each day for a week, then watched the videos, reflected on what I noticed, and made changes to my instruction. After that, I began filming again. I continued this cycle for one week each month over the course of about three months.

Watching yourself teach is an experience. You begin to notice things you would never catch while you are in the middle of a lesson. But I didn’t want to simply watch the video and critique myself. I wanted to be able to explain the thinking behind what I was doing.

I began explicitly explaining the reasoning behind my teacher moves and connecting those decisions back to student learning and achievement. I also began using structured talking routines before writing that aligned with students’ graphic organizers. These routines allowed my students to rehearse their ideas orally, expand on their thinking, and add more specific details before putting their ideas on paper. Over time, my students began transferring the ideas, vocabulary, and details they expressed orally into their writing.

That changed the way I watched myself. Instead of only noticing the awkward moments and what I wished I had done differently, I could see where I had made purposeful decisions based on what students needed in that moment. This practice helped me understand that strong teaching is about becoming increasingly aware of the decisions we make, understanding how those decisions affect students, and being willing to adjust.

When I began including these strategies in my teacher reflection, I stopped viewing reflection as a tool for finding everything that needed to be fixed. It became a way of studying my craft. It also helped me see myself more fully as an educator who seeks to serve the people who matter most in our schools: the students.