Microsoft Reflect

A check-in app to support connection,
expression, and learning

• 
  Build Self-Awareness
  & Empathy
• 
  Grow Emotional
  Vocabulary
• 
  Identify & Navigate
  Your Emotions
• 
  Develop Growth-mindset
  & Confidence

Using Reflect

• Create

  • Encourage students to identify and express their emotions with Reflect in Teams.
  • Get a sense of students' baseline knowledge, confidence, and motivation, with contextualized questions in Class Notebook.
  
• Respond

  • Students use emojis and illustrated representations of emotion words to share their personal experience with educators.
  • Having space to share helps build a classroom ecosystem where students feel safe making mistakes and growing.
  
• Identify focus areas

  • Inform your teaching strategy and meet students where they are with response data in real time.
  • Connect with students about their responses and differentiate to meet their emotional and academic needs.
  • Find opportunities to celebrate!
  
• Insights into action

  • Identify when a student’s norm changes, or when variables are impacting the class with Insights-powered visualizations.
  • Initiate conversations or advocate for students equipped with data.
  

Check in anytime, anywhere

• 
  Microsoft Teams
  Check in with your Class Team
  >
• 
  Class Notebook
  Embed check-ins for formative assessment
  >

Get started

Expand learning with activities!

• 
  All the Feels
  Ignite wellbeing conversations with brief clips featuring the Feelings Monster.
  >
• 
  PowerPoint
  Get students thinking with structured SEL projects.
  >
• 
  Kahoot!
  Introduce and discuss social emotional skills with Kahoot! activities.
  >
• 
  Flip
  Get creative with social and emotional learning.
  >

Make Reflect part of your routine

• 
  SEL Check-ins

  One-on-one attention has an enormous impact on engagement, learning, and well-being of students. Without it, students’ needs can be missed, and emotions can surface in ways that aren’t easy to understand. Make check-ins part of your routine to give each of your students a place to share their feelings and give yourself data to track their status, progress and needs.
• 
  Learning progress

  Self-awareness and self-management are critical skills for lifelong learning - by providing opportunities for students to reflect on their learning educators not only inform the trajectory of their teaching, but also increase students’ agency in learning. Students can practice asking for help and develop a growth mindset through honestly evaluating their effort, motivation, and progress. It is vital that students have a safe space to develop these skills, as it takes plenty of practice!
• 
  Educator wellness

  Social and emotional learning isn't just for kids.

  While evidence shows that teachers with higher levels of social emotional competence have more effective classroom management, better retention, and higher academic achievement in their students, very little training is provided to support teacher’s personal SEL.

  To effectively teach SEL skills, educators first need space to reflect personally and recognize their skills and opportunities for growth. Use Reflect in Staff Teams to take the temperature of your school ecosystem and ensure that educators' own needs are being met so they can invest the best of themselves in teaching.

Setting the scene

Introduce Reflect to the class

When establishing your class check-in routine, make sure your students understand the expectations and how sharing emotions can support them in their learning.

Identifying feelings

Knowing how you feel isn't always easy, but it's an important skill to develop for communicating and collaborating effectively. In addition to using Reflect check-ins, try modeling your thoughts aloud for your students. For example, “I’m not feeling as patient as usual today, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t sleep well or because I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

Get to know comfortable emotions

When we recognize and sit with a comfortable emotion, it's easier to identify how it contributes to our wellness. With this awareness, we can actively work to create these conditions for ourselves.

Validate uncomfortable emotions

All emotions are valid. Honestly assessing how we feel and communicating our needs is a skill that takes practice. By providing a space for students to share emotions, you can help destigmatize talking about and addressing uncomfortable feelings.

Build classroom community

Help students understand that everyone has comfortable and uncomfortable emotions, but every student's reasons for those emotions may be different. Communicating clearly and respecting one another's unique needs builds a strong class community.

Practicing empathy

Empathy is the ability to perceive, understand, and care about the experiences or perspectives of others. Help students practice perspective taking with the question, “How do you think your classmates are feeling right now?”

Communicating feelings

When people don't have the skills to communicate their emotional needs, their feelings can show up in behaviors that are hard to understand. Helping students build the vocabulary and confidence to share their feelings can improve classroom behavior.

Make space to move

Sometimes we need to work through our emotions physically. Encourage students to take breaks to stretch, dance, or take a walk. Taking a moment to connect our body and mind can help us to see things more clearly.

Managing stress

Like all skills, noticing stress and using strategies to relieve it takes practice. Help students connect the feelings they identify to management strategies. For stress we recommend strategies like breathing, taking a break, or even dancing!

Reflect before you act

When feelings are very strong, we often want to act immediately! With practice reflecting, students have a stronger ability to make thoughtful decisions.

All emotions are valid

Model talking openly with your students about emotions - your students look to you, and your willingness to demonstrate that the classroom is a safe place to communicate honestly is vital.

In the news

• 
  The hidden power of feelings
• 
  The Feelings Monster, building a character with all the feels
• 
  More meaningful check-ins with Microsoft Reflect
• 
  Prioritizing and Supporting Student Well-being
• 
  Staff of 2030: Future-Ready Teaching
• 
  Emotion and Cognition in the Age of AI