Unleash Your Students' Learning Potential with Exam Wrappers

Imagine if your students had the tools they needed to take control of their own learning, set realistic goals, and achieve academic success. What if they could identify their strengths and weaknesses, track their progress, and develop strategies to improve their performance? With the power of self-reflection, this can become a reality.

But as a teacher, you may be having doubts. How can you effectively promote self-reflection among your students? Will they take it seriously? Can it really make a difference in their academic outcomes?

As I’m sure you know, self-reflection plays an important role in teaching students not just what to learn, but also how they learn and what they can do to improve their learning outcomes. 

Through self-assessment and self-reflection, students can: 

🤔 Evaluate their work against a set of criteria. 

🔀 Track their learning progress.

🔎 Identify areas of strengths and weaknesses in their skill set and knowledge.

🎯 Set realistic learning goals.

👩‍🎓 Act on feedback given from their teacher to improve performance.

One strategy I have found helpful to support student self-reflection is by using Exam Wrappers. I’m sure many teachers already use these but if you are unfamiliar with them, exam wrappers are reflective exercises that students complete after taking a test or completing an assignment. They provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their performance, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and develop strategies to improve their future performance. By encouraging students to reflect on their learning and become more aware of their thinking processes, you can help them become more independent, self-directed learners.

To get started with exam wrappers, you'll need to create a set of reflective questions that students can answer after taking a test or exam. These questions should focus on the following areas:

Student preparation: What study strategies did you use to prepare for the exam? Did they work? Why or why not?

Exam performance: What did you find challenging about the exam? What did you do well? Were there any surprises?

Feedback: What feedback did you receive on your exam? What did you learn from this feedback? How will you use this feedback to improve your future performance?

Goal-setting: Based on your reflection, what goals do you have for improving your performance on future exams? What strategies will you use to achieve these goals?

Once you have created your set of reflective questions, provide them to your students after they have completed an exam. Encourage them to take their time and be honest with themselves as they answer the questions.

After students have completed the exam wrappers, review their responses and look for patterns. You may notice that many students struggled with the same concept, or that some students did not use effective study strategies. Use this information to guide your future instruction and to provide targeted feedback to individual students.

In addition to promoting metacognition among your students, exam wrappers can also be a valuable tool for you as a teacher. By reviewing student responses, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your instruction and the clarity of your exam questions. Use this information to improve your future teaching and assessment practices.

We have found exam wrappers to be a simple and effective way to promote metacognition among students. By encouraging reflection and self-awareness, you can help your students become more independent, self-directed learners who are better equipped to achieve their academic goals. Give exam wrappers a try in your classroom and see the positive impact they can have on student learning. 

We’ve included two versions of exam wrappers below, one elementary and one secondary. Feel free to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute as needed.