Teaching & Learning Tip
Guest post by Mosisah Mavity (Associate Director, Office of Student Retention) and Kirby Orr (Educational Initiatives Specialist, Office of Student Retention)
By the fifth week of the semester, students have had enough experience to form a sense of how the term is going. They’ve submitted assignments, taken exams, received feedback, and started drawing conclusions about themselves as students. Fifth-week grades offer an important opportunity to compare those perceptions with some actual academic evidence. Sometimes the two align; sometimes they don’t. Either way, there is enough information to reflect, and still plenty of time to act.
That makes fifth-week grades a useful opportunity for meaningful reflection and course correction where needed, rather than just an early warning sign to faculty. Instead of framing fifth-week grades as a predictive red flag, we can help students see them as a data point, not a verdict. The grade itself is only a starting point. It is information about their performance right now, under their current circumstances and approaches. It is not a prediction of how the semester will end, nor a statement about their ability to succeed.
This framing also helps students separate an academic outcome from a judgment about themselves. “I earned a D on this exam” can quickly become “I’m bad at chemistry.” Instead, we can help students slow that leap down: What contributed to this outcome? Which of those factors are within my control? What could I try differently? And the same reflection matters when things are going well. A strong grade is an opportunity to identify the habits, strategies, decisions, and supports that are worth continuing.
The real opportunity is helping students move from feedback to reflection to action. A few questions can help:
- What’s working? Reflection matters when things are going well, too. What habits, strategies, choices, or supports contributed to a positive result? Don’t forget that celebrating the wins is just as important as recognizing changes that need to be made.
- What contributed to the result? Looking beyond the letter grade can help students identify behaviors, circumstances, challenges, and decisions that affected their performance and that may need to be adjusted.
- What might need to change? Rather than jumping straight to a solution, students can consider which contributing factors are within their control and what realistic adjustments are possible.
- How are we thinking about this? Encourage students to take their fixed mindset thoughts and turn them into growth mindset thoughts, so the message goes from “I knew I wasn’t a science person; that’s why I’m failing” to “I’ve struggled in chemistry so far, but I can improve if I get tutoring and set aside time to study each week.”
- What comes next? Reflection becomes more useful when it ends with a concrete next step, whether that means changing a study strategy, communicating with an instructor, seeking support, addressing a barrier, or continuing something that is already working.
The goal isn’t to turn every fifth-week grade into a problem to solve. It’s to help students practice interpreting feedback without turning it into a judgment about themselves, recognize where they have agency, and make intentional decisions about what comes next.