Reflect app

  • 6 minutes

Reflect is an app available in Microsoft Teams that helps learners recognize and navigate their emotions by providing regular opportunities to share and be heard. Reflect helps broaden learners' emotional vocabulary and deepen empathy for their peers while also providing valuable feedback to educators for a healthy class community.

This check-in app uses emojis and characters to help learners develop emotional granularity. Research demonstrates that explicit teaching of social and emotional skills improves learner academic and behavioral performance and has life-long positive impacts. Reflect is designed to support educators in adding social and emotional learning into their already busy routine.

What is Reflect to learners?

  • A private place to respond to a self-reflection
  • A way to communicate emotions with a trusted adult
  • Practice naming emotions

What is Reflect to educators?

  • A way to encourage reflective conversations in a class
  • Part of a daily routine
  • Actionable information about learner readiness for learning

SEL and the class

Identifying and navigating emotions isn't easy, and research shows that explicit instruction of these skills has major lifelong impacts. Reflect check-ins are designed to support educators in embedding explicit SEL instruction in their class routine. Reflect uses emojis and a carefully designed expressive character to bring the 50 emotions in Reflect to life, helping learners connect facial expressions and body language to the novel vocabulary of Reflect check-ins. Learners view their responses over time, helping them identify patterns and strategize for their emotional well-being. Educators may choose to share the distribution of responses in their class. Learning how others are feeling is a great prompt for lessons on empathy, and collaborative problem solving.

What is emotional granularity?

Reflect supports learners in building the vocabulary required to communicate needs clearly by asking them to name their emotion. The Reflect team worked with SEL experts to select 50 emotion words that learners identify with as they complete check-ins.

Developing language to talk about feelings is foundational to social and emotional learning. Accurately defining emotions helps to identify their source and make a plan to meet one’s needs. Emotional granularity is the ability to differentiate between feelings and articulate emotional experience; that self-awareness is one of the key tenets of social and emotional learning. Learn about SEL skills and how to use Reflect in class with this module.

Introduce the Feelings Monster with Kahoot!

Inviting learners to share their feelings helps build a class environment where everyone's emotions matter and it's safe to learn and grow. Like all skills, expressing emotions takes practice. Microsoft Education partnered with Kahoot! to create ready-to-play games that use the Feelings Monster to ignite conversations in any class. The Feelings Monster is designed to help make uncomfortable emotions more approachable and addressable—and comfortable emotions fun to share and celebrate! Explore our Kahoot! games to learn more about the Feelings Monster and help learners get comfortable with Reflect.

Get started with Reflect

The first step toward developing a new routine is always the hardest. Check out this step-by-step support for implementing Reflect check-ins in your class. Each learner has emotions as complex and real as their supporting adults—but they may not have the skills to address those emotions. Schedule a daily or weekly check-in to start building a class ecosystem where conversations about learners’ feelings and needs are encouraged. Then work together to build SEL capacities.

Explore it

One-on-one attention has an enormous impact on engagement, learning, and well-being. Without it, learners’ needs may be missed, and emotions surface in ways that aren’t easy to understand. This makes it harder to build relationships and motivation, especially in uncertain times when learners need the most support. Whether teaching in person or remotely, your learners feel heard, valued, and connected when given an opportunity to share their emotions. Reflect takes a pulse on the emotions of individual learners and the learning community.

Consider using Reflect:

  • At the start of the day or after lunch
  • After an assignment or an activity
  • When an event impacts the school community
  • When there are conflicts or challenges in the class

Here are some other ideas for getting started:

  • Reach out one-on-one to learners who are experiencing a pattern of difficult emotions.
  • Host conversations about the new emotion vocabulary Reflect introduces. Why is excited different than motivated? Why does it matter to be able to express oneself clearly?
  • Discuss empathy with learners: “Are there other people in the class who are also in the orange range today? Are there people who are having a different experience today? Consider why they're feeling different.”

Reflect

It's important that procedures for safeguarding learner emotional well-being are clear to learners, educators, and families and that they're utilized consistently. These procedures are usually created by the adults at school and cover such questions as:

  • How is learner well-being be monitored?
  • How will the school support learners remotely?
  • What support will be put into place for children who need it?
  • If a pupil is really struggling, where do they (or their family or educators) find additional info or ask for more help?
  • If I, as an educator, am unsure what to do in a situation, which member of staff do I reach out to?
  • How will school staff follow-up with learners or families who need support?
  • What learner responses do you have the power to impact through your teaching methods?