Minute paper

Minute papers (or other short writing tasks) give students the opportunity to reflect and focus their thoughts before continuing on. Students are asked to write a short reflective response, in under a minute, to a specific question. This helps the student take a moment to reflect and allows the educator to assess the student’s understanding after collecting their responses.

Typically, this activity is used at the end of a class or a topic of discussion. Students can write their responses on cards or paper handed out by the educator or in an online space (e.g. a form or discussion forum). Questions should be focused and specific enough to give students direction in answering the question.

Minute papers are

effective for:

best to pair with:

  • Categorising and ordering knowledge
  • Clarifying understanding
  • Authentic experience
  • Immediate feedback
  • Reflective thinking or practice
  • Cards
  • Categorising grid
  • Clarification pause
  • Large groups discussion
  • Recall, summarise, question, connect and comment
  • Student-generated Q&A
  • Think-pair-share

Example

The construction of questions is important. Avoid questions that are too open ended as they allow the students to not write anything. For example; “Is there any...?”-type questions allow the student to say ‘no’ without reflecting.

Questions should be open-ended to allow for effective engagement:

  1. “What are the three or four most significant or meaningful things you have learned in this session?”
  2. “From today’s session, list two concepts you feel you understood well and two that you are unsure about.”
  3. “What was the most interesting point, to you, that was discussed in your groups?”

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