assignment 02 07 short reflective writing

Center for Teaching Excellence Division of Student Success

Designing reflective writing assignments.

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The goal of designing reflective writing assignments that proceed major research projects is to better support students to achieve deep reflection rather than surface level recall.

• Explain the purpose at the beginning of the assignment.
• Be clear as to WHY they are going to reflect.
• Use the guiding questions to model WHAT students will be reflecting on and HOW to engage in deep reflection.
• Connect the reflection assignment to course objectives to provide overall course connections.

Examples of Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing Help and Advice

A Short Guide to Reflective Writing

Using Reflective Writing to Deepen Student Learning

Reflection Tool Kit

Created by Denae Dibrell as a dissemination activity informed by the CTE Experiential Learning: Undergraduate Research and Service Learning faculty learning community facilitated by faculty fellow Erika Perez, Lecturer II in the UTRGV University College.

Reflective Writing Activities

In-class/at-home exercises.

All WR courses should offer students regular and varied opportunities for reflection, including personal, metacognitive, and social/systemic reflections that instructors assign as in-class activities and/or for homework throughout the term. Each semester, WR students will choose three of these reflections for inclusion in their cumulative portfolios . Below you will find ideas and examples that can be used or modified as you wish. Remember that reflections don’t always need to take written form. As long as students can capture them in some way (as a photo or video, for example), they can include them in their portfolios on Digication. Note that all sections of WR 111-WR 15x must also assign the Literacy Narrative , though only students who are new to the WR sequence will complete it.

Personal Reflections

In personal reflections, students reflect on their own experiences with communication, as well as their own identities vis-a-vis writing—their “personal views, knowledge, experiences, reactions, and positionality” (Goldsmith et al. “Expanding Reflective Writing Theory for Inclusive Practice.” Association for Writing Across the Curriculum workshop,, April 6, 2022. ).  They answer the question: “Who are you as a writer and communicator?

In relation to the Writing Program’s common portfolio literacy narrative :

• Scaffold the literacy narrative with Qianqian Zhang-Wu’s “Draw your linguistic and cultural identity” activity (presented to the Writing Program in January 2023 here , with more information here ).
• Have students create positionality maps (see resources here and here ) and have them reflect on the intersections between positionality and education/writing.
• Follow up on the literacy narrative in a way that is relevant to your course level and/or course topic.

During the drafting and peer review process:

• Assign the inner critic activity.
• During peer review activities, have students reflect on how their identities/positionalities and/or past experiences with writing may shape their ways of engaging other students’ texts.

At the end of the semester:

• Ask students to revisit and respond to their literacy narrative in light of their experiences in the class.
• Have students reflect on how writing has helped them connect with communities at BU, both academic and nonacademic.

Metacognitive Reflections

In reflections for metacognition, students reflect on the writing and learning processes, on their “individual learning or choices made within disciplinary activity to move toward action” (Goldsmith et al.) They answer the question: “What have you learned about how to write and communicate?”  All of our Essential Lessons  contain metacognitive notes with specific applications in a sidebar. Instructors may also wish to consult our faculty guide to metacognition in the writing classroom.

In relation to texts: 

• Have students reflect on/discuss how readings fit into the context of the course: Why did we do this reading/viewing/etc? What was the purpose of it? How would I have experienced it differently if it preceded this other author we read? How might I respond to this reading if I were writing a paper on it?
• Before they begin writing, have students reflect on assignment goals: What am I imagining for the upcoming paper assignment? What feeling do I want my reader to take away from my paper, and why? Which of our class readings do I really want to include in my paper? Which do I definitely not want to include?
• Before or after peer review, have students reflect on where they are in the process: What is the best thing about my draft at this point? What strategy or tip did I use in the process of working on this draft that has been helpful? Where am I stuck right now? What would I like feedback on at this point, and why?
• Have students submit a cover memo with their final draft: If I had an extra two days, with no other commitments, to work on this paper, how would I change it and why? What is different about this paper than my other papers? What is one style or technique I borrowed from the writers we read?

At the end of the module:

• Ask students to respond to the feedback they have received on a final draft: In what ways does the feedback align with how I was thinking about my essay? What, if anything, surprised me about the feedback I received, and why? How can I take this feedback and apply it to future assignments?
• Once an assignment sequence is complete, have students consider what might transfer out: What skills did I develop during this assignment sequence? How could I apply them in other academic and/or non-academic contexts?

Social/Systemic Reflections

In social or systemic reflections, students “grapple with belief systems […] reflecting on concepts by examining broader social elements and understanding beyond personal experience” (Goldsmith et al.) They answer the question: “What do you believe about writing and communication?”

In relation to texts:

• Have students tie course texts/content to larger questions about language and power.
• Have students reflect on the syllabus as a genre that forms/is formed by social relationships and operates within a system of power.
• Have students reflect on ________ as a genre that forms/is formed by social relationships and operates within a system of power
• Have students reflect on the genre of and audience(s) for their draft: Where do you find this genre empowering? Where do you find yourself resisting constraints of this genre? Why?
• Before and/or after peer review, have students reflect on beliefs (old and new) about language choice and “correctness” or “standard” language conventions.

At the end of semester:  

• Have students reflect on their ideas about what writing is or how writing works (perhaps in relation to genre awareness, interactions with generative AI, critical language awareness, or another topic relevant to your topic)
• Ask students to reflect on the relationship between writing, identity, and community–at BU, in their prospective field of study, or in other contexts.

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Writing a Reflection Paragraph for your Assignment

• September 23, 2020
• Uncategorized

In our day to day lives, we often reflect naturally on our situations and circumstances, thinking about things – how they happened, why they happened or whether we handled them well or not. The same goes for the academic writing aspect as well, where you are told formalize your reflections into content to show that learning is taking place at some point or another.

What Reflective writing is,

• A way of thinking where you dive deeper into your knowledge base and explore things for learning.
• A better means for achieving clarity on things and understanding the aspects of what you learn.
• A reflection of your responses to different experiences, events, opinions, thoughts or feelings (here we talk about any new kind of information).
• A golden opportunity for learners to gain self-knowledge.
• A chance to develop and enhance your writing skills.

What Reflective writing is not,

• Pure description of something talked about.
• Simple problem-solving equation.
• Just a mere source for conveying information, facts and arguments.
• A summary of something.
• A pending decision or judgement about something.

“A reflection paragraph or essay simply speaks about something related to your thoughts and opinions, rather than just providing a summary or description of that something.”

Writing reflective paragraphs for your assignment does not simply mean that you provide a gist or summary of something that describes the event and how it happened. Nor does it mean that you pour out everything that you think or feel about it, that too in an unstructured manner. If you want to write the proper reflective paragraphs for your assignment, then you must use relevant examples and evidence for it that can help illustrate the image of your reflections and its analytical approach. Your focus needs to be on providing a clear line of thought to your content.

Models of Reflective Writing

Schon’s model of Reflection in and on action (1983)

Reflection in Action: Thinking ahead, analyzing, critically responding, experiencing

While attending a lecture, there are certain things that cross your mind. This keeps you distracted from the thing being taught in the classroom. On one hand, you want to get the most from your lecture, but on the other, you are not able to focus well because of those distractions. So you need to find a way that helps establish your focus back on studies. Finally, you decide to start making notes of the key points being taught by your teacher.

Reflection an Action: thinking through subsequent situations, discussion, reflective journal

At times, students cannot remember things taught in the lecture soon after the class ends its session. So for next time, you find about the topic being discussed in the classroom and write down questions related to it, to solve your queries. You also make subsequent notes during the lecture to help focus during the class session. Later, you hang out with your friends and classmates and discuss about things being taught in the lecture. This helps you understand the topic more clearly, and you form more valuable opinions regarding it. In the end, you file your lecture notes and related handouts.

Gibb’s Reflection cycle (1988)

Description

• What did you do?
• What was your context?
• Where did it happen?
• What happened?
• How did it happen?
• How did you feel?
• What were you thinking about?
• What made you happy/sad about the incident?
• What was good/bad about the event?
• What were your reactions?
• Why did things happen the way they did?
• What might have helped or hindered your project?
• What sense can you make out of the situation?
• Are there any ways or perspectives that challenge your views?
• What else could you have done for it?
• What did you learn from it?
• What can you do to change things in future?

Action Plan

• What will you do if you find yourself in the same situation?
• What things would you change next time?

Reflection is a very useful process for students that can help bring out a flawless copy of their assignment . It helps you to make sense out of things and learn from your own experiences and situations. This also allows you to demonstrate the aspect that you can actually think critically about things and your own skills or practice in order to improve and learn in life.

Hope this blog helps you include all those good and well-versed reflective paragraphs in your assignment . Apart from this, if you feel the need to acquire online assignment help from experts, then feel free to contact our online academic writing services for professional help and guidance.

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Reflective Assignment

A reflection by students on their own experiences, views and suggestions for action in relation to their learning and or work/life experiences (in written or multimedia formats).  It can be in the form of a journal, log, blog or diary, and may be incorporated into a collection of evidence in the form of a portfolio .

What can it assess ?

Reflective assignments can assess the extent to which students learn from their experience, as well as the critical thinking and reflective skills that enable them to make sense of information and/or situations that are not straightforward. These tasks can be used to assess students’ ability to reflect on the development of their own learning and self-generate feedback that can be used to improve their performance.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Disadvantages.

• Supports learning that is personally meaningful
• Students develop the ability to reflect on the progress of their learning and/or practice and identify areas for improvement
• Encourages deep learning as students are required to make sense of material as it relates to their own experience
• Students can be encouraged to incorporate reflection on any formative feedback.
• Reflective writing is unfamiliar to many students who will need support and guidance to help with the task of reflection
• Can be challenging to assess and mark; requires the use of clear and transparent assessment criteria, rubrics and assessment guidance for students
• Issues of trust may arise when assessing personal reflections.

Design and Online Assessment Considerations

When designing reflective writing assessments, consider the following questions:

• How will students be prepared to conduct reflective writing exercises?
• Should reflective writing tasks take place throughout the module or only at specific points in the trimester? What’s the rationale for the chosen approach?
• How will reflective writing assignments be assessed? What criteria will be used? 

Be clear about the reasons that reflection is embedded into the module and how it supports learning. Students may be instructed to use specific Reflective Practice Models which can offer guidance on how to structure reflective writing and also support the development of clear assessment criteria for the assignment.  Consider using a rubric, or similar, to help clarify your expectations and to support student feedback and/or opportunity for self/ peer review before submission of their work. 

Journals and reflective assignments often start off as purely descriptive, however with support students can develop their writing to be more dialogic and critical (Rivera, 2017). It is important that students demonstrate reflective thinking on the development of their learning and/or practice. Sensitive issues related to student trust may arise when writing about personal and/or difficult encounters or situations, as well as issues around privacy and confidentiality if any of the work is shared.

Although Brightspace does not include a specific journaling tool, lecturers can use the VLE to provide students with the opportunity to keep a reflective journal. For example, s tudents could do this very simply online by keeping a word document that they build up over time and then submit at the end. Alternatively, by setting up private groups with restricted discussions using Brightspace’s Groups and discussion forum in Brightspace, students can keep a private journal which may be shared with the lecturer. You can view step-by-step instructions on how to set up reflective journals for students using Private Discussions in Brightspace . Please note that there is an upper limit of 200 groups per group set.   

Other tools and technologies to support this assessment type  include;

• Video assignment ( supported by Bongo integrated in Brightspace )
• File/text assignment submission in Brightspace .
• Creating a Discussion Forum in Brightspace  

Preparing Students

It is important to start out with a clear understanding of what you mean by reflection as well as the process involved. Be able to clearly articulate the key elements of a reflective assignment, providing guidance on how students can engage in the reflective process, and set out clear criteria used to assess performance. Keep in mind that reflective writing will be unfamiliar to most students, and it can be helpful to set aside time in a class to enable students to discuss their understanding of reflection as well as the requirements for the assessment. Initially, short and structured reflective activities might help students to become more familiar with the idea of reflection. As students become accustomed to reflective approaches to learning, more complex assignments can be used to deepen their reflective practice. 

Clarify your expectations in terms of indicative word count for reflective pieces -this will also be important in terms of lecturer’s grading workload.

Learn More  

The following are some key resources that are currently available if you would like to learn more about this key assessment type.

• Learning Journals and Logs
• Reflective practice models
• UCD IT Services Bongo Video Assignment Setup
• University of Edinburgh Reflection Toolkit
• Bracken, R. C., A. Major, A. Paul and K. Ostherr (2021). " Reflective Writing about Near-Peer Blogs: A Novel Method for Introducing the Medical Humanities in Premedical Education. " Journal of Medical Humanities : 1-35 .
• Moon, J (1999) Reflection in Learning and Professional Development, Kogan Page, London
• Rivera, Roja  (2017) The reflective writing continuum: Re-conceptualizing Hatton & Smith’s types of reflective writing  International Journal of Research Studies in Education , Volume 6 Number 2, 49-67

WTO / Education / How to Write a Reflective Essay | 48 Essay Examples

How to Write a Reflective Essay | 48 Essay Examples

A Reflective Essay is a form of writing that describes a writer’s thoughts, feelings, actions, or a particular occurrence in a writer’s life.

This essay is about your reflection that brings out a specific image that the reader tends to picture after reading it. When writing this essay, you have to give detailed information about the event or a particular action. In the essay, you will analyze a past event from your present perspective and point to the relevant lessons you learned.

Reflective essay examples act as an inspiration for those who have no clue about writing essays by giving them an overview of how it is written. In addition, someone who is not conversant with writing the essays may look for examples of essays and read through to see the structure, format, and ideas for writing his essay.

The essays may be written from a personal experience or perhaps made up through imagination. You should discuss how the event happened and how it made you feel, including the lessons learned.

Reflective Essay Examples

Purpose of Reflective Essay

The essay is written from personal insight and self-reflection to help recount a particular event. These essays are written in school as assignments to connect the theoretical and practical aspects of teaching. Professionally written essays enable workers to reflect on their experiences and what they have learned from the job.

The following are some of the types of reflective essays that you can write:

A literary self-reflection is based on your thoughts about a literary piece you have read. You are supposed to give your opinion based on your experiences to demonstrate how you relate to the piece of literature.

Professional

Employers and employees use professional essays to gauge their knowledge about a particular aspect and how they can handle it.

The following are some of the fields that frequently use reflective essays:

Medical students

Medical students use these essays to describe patients based on their interactions to help suggest correct medication. Through these essays, students can reflect on their examination of a patient and conclusions made and later determine if it worked or what can be changed later.

Medical doctors use the essays to evaluate their interactions with customers to gauge their strengths and weaknesses in service delivery and providing treatment. Doctors use these essays to internalize their communication methods, treatment processes, and body language when treating a patient to establish areas that need improvement for increased effectiveness.

Nurses and medical assistants

By writing such essays, nurses and medical assistants can reflect on certain incidents they have encountered in the past and better handle stress, pain, and illness. Nurses and medical assistants experience stress and emotions from patients, having self-reflection can help them deal with it and perform their roles.

Lecturers and teachers

In the teaching profession, these essays help the lecturers learn and understand students’ strengths and weaknesses. They help teachers understand the growth and development of the students by reviewing their emotions.

Social workers

Social workers can write a reflection on various environmental issues and problems their clients face. They also use these essays written by their clients to find the causes of certain experiences and how they can solve developing issues highlighted.

Entrepreneurs

The business field uses such essays to analyze certain aspects of the business that they are experiencing. These essays help them come up with possible solutions for the challenges faced and offer better services.

Educational

In educational institutions, lecturers and tutors use such essays to gauge the level of understanding on a particular assignment or topic covered. When students write these essays, they can create a form of interaction with the lecturers. In addition, the lecturers can understand the students’ views on particular topics in learning through the essays.

Writing personal reflective essays can enable one to learn and understand specific experiences in their life and how to handle them. Reflective writing can enable you to understand your emotions, and you can be able to grow as a person.

Reflective Essay Example Ideas

From our definition above, you can write the essays from various perspectives. There are multiple ideas from which you can write your essay without being limited. These essays are written from an actual event or imagination.

The following are example ideas for reflective essays you can write:

A real experience

The essay is written based on a real-life experience that you had a personal connection with. In this real experience essay, you will talk about something factual rather than imagination.

You may write the essay based on a job you lost, a wedding event you attended, or an emotion you felt.

In this type of the essay, you have to give a detailed description of the particular events and the lessons learned.

Something you imagined

An imagination reflective essay is written about a creative feeling or an event that comes from your mind. This type has no facts and is an idea that has been thought of or speculated.

A place or a special object

The essay about a place or an object may be written about a town you had visited or a car you love. This essay talks about that specific place or objects positively or negatively depending on the writer’s perspective.

An indirect experience

The essay may be written from something that you have read, such as a book. It can also be written from what you have seen, such as an event or about a meal you have tasted or something that you have smelled, or a story you have heard. You should portray what you felt to the reader and its effect on you with the above-mentioned ideas.

Pre-Writing Essentials

Before writing the essay, you need to have a clear plan on what to write. First, take your time and list all the ideas and topics you want to write about. Then, you need to brainstorm and have some questions about the topic ideas.

The following part will highlight some of the steps you may follow to attain the perfect outcome, whether it is a school essay or a professional one:

Identify the topic you will be writing on

The first step in writing the essay is coming up with the topic you want to write on. In the institutions of learning, a subject is given for you to write. To write it excellent, you have to choose a topic you are confident with and have a vivid description. In cases where the topic is not given, you will need to employ your imagination and creativity to develop a topic.

Study your subject

When writing the essay on a specific topic, you may have to relive that moment to have a clear picture of the events. In addition, you may need to meditate and note down the key points you intend to write.

Note down the relevant ideas

In this step of writing the essay, you might have to take notes of the relevant ideas related to your topic. This will help you connect the ideas, simplify writing, and give you a clear direction. You might also try to sketch a diagram and link related topics, ideas, and theories that you intend to write in your essay.

Pick reflection questions

Reflective questions are questions that you ask yourself to help you plan your work when writing the essay.

Some of the examples of thoughtful questions are stated below to help you:

• What did I find out?
• What was my feeling towards this?
• What made me feel this way?
• What lessons have I learned?
• What impact has it had on me?
• What effect did it have on people around me?

 These questions will act as your compass when writing your essays. You can have as many questions as you want, as this will give you many ideas to write in your essay.

Answer the questions you selected

After formulating the reflective questions that will guide you in writing your essay, you have to develop the relevant answers to your questions. The answers to these questions will be the ideas that you will write.

What did I find out? While on my short holiday I took my time off and went hiking on the mountains. This hike happened to be one of my toughest hikes. The hill has a thick forest, and I had to navigate through it to find the way. Also, the place is cold, and I had to keep myself warm during my hike.

What impact has it had on me? My time at the university was very interesting because of the people I met from different background races and cultures. Having lived in the countryside, I can appreciate people from diverse cultures and their beliefs. In addition, I was able to attend different festivals and interact with classmates on a personal level.

Identify the meaning of your experience

Before you embark on your essay writing, you need to identify the most crucial lesson you learned through that experience. This will form the basis on which you will be writing your essay. This experience will be your main subject in your essay.

Keep your ideas connected

At this point of our planning, you have the topic you want to write and the ideas connecting. You can now use the ideas you have come up with to guide you through your essay writing. Also, note the primary experience in your writing so as not to go out of the topic.

How to Write a Reflective Essay

When writing the essay, you need to follow the standard for writing a typical essay.

The following steps outline a step-by-step that you follow to write a great essay:

Introduction

In the introduction part of the essay, you have to outline the topic you want to write about and give the reader a general view of the event’s effect on you. When writing your introduction, interesting aspects of your story have to be indicated to increase your chances of getting your reader’s attention.

The hook in the introductory paragraph is to bring your audience or reader to attention from the very start. You need to describe exciting and interesting aspects of your essay to make the reader motivated to continue reading. For example, there is a thin line between life and death, one moment, you are happy and healthy but you don’t know what the next minute holds.

 A thesis statement summarizes the main subject of your essay and it’s usually the main experience and the influence it had on you.

My passion for cars and machines was one reason that made me pursue a mechanical engineering career.

When writing an introduction, you should start your paragraph with a catchy phrase that can easily capture the reader’s attention and motivate them to continue reading your essay

The body of the essay is the most integral part of your writing and carries the whole message and clear description of the events. You can have several paragraphs to talk about your reflection from your perspective and the impression the experience had on you and those around you.

In the essay on “Why Money is Important,” you can discuss the reason why money is important to you like “ I think money is a valuable asset because you need it to afford the basic things in life”.

In paragraph one, you need to talk about the experience you had. Since this is a reflective essay, you need to write with an open mind and write your thoughts.

I lived in the streets when growing up because my single mum could not afford rent money

You need to discuss another reason in your second paragraph further why the subject you are talking about had an impression on you by giving detailed information to portray the picture to the reader of the essay.

Inability to afford basic necessities like education, food, clothing, and shelter because of poverty reminds me of all the opportunities I missed because of lack of proper education.

The third paragraph of your essay writing is a continuation of the previous and a different experience that should be discussed in detail and the impression it made on you. ” We lost our dignity begging on the streets to feed our hungry stomachs, which is part of the reason why I  assert that money is important to feel accomplished and help you reserve some self-dignity.”

In the conclusion of your essay, you need to discuss your thesis statement and the key points you have highlighted in your essay. Then, you can conclude by giving your thoughts about the experience and what you will do differently in the future in case of such an event.

The closing paragraph or conclusion of the essay should include a recap of your thesis statement, followed by the reason for discussing the subject. Finally, the thesis statement states the essay’s objective, which should be included as a summary in the conclusion.

In my life, I never understood much about life. However, my experience as a volunteer with sick people in the hospital made me appreciate life and all the good things.

Reflective Essay Samples

Reflective Paper Examples

Tips for Efficient Results

There are a few tips, if which are kept in consideration while writing the essay, efficient results can be attained.

If you want to write a great essay, here are writing tips that you have to take note of:

Allow your ideas to flow freely

After choosing the topic to write about, have an open mind when writing your essay and write from a personal perspective. Let your ideas flow freely without limiting yourself, considering that you will always have time to go through your essay to edit.

Maintain a high standard of analysis

When writing your essays, you need to analyze the experiences you are writing about by continually asking yourself questions about the incidents. Take note of the challenges that you might encounter and your knowledge in handling such challenges. By having this in mind while writing, you will be able to handle your essay paper and capture all the experiences, making the reader relive your experience. When writing, you need to ask yourself relevant questions that will keep you on the topic.

What challenges are you facing? What are the lessons learned? What knowledge do I need for me to handle this experience?

Well-rounded plan

After coming up with your topic and gathering all the required information, you need to work out a well-rounded plan. Having a plan before writing ensures that you have a logical flow of writing with ideas clearly conveyed. This is a crucial step in writing thee essays as some people may tend to have a poor recount of the incidents and have a disorganized essay. A clear plan will act as your guide, which will ensure a good flow of your essay.

Try adopting a chronological approach

By adopting a chronological approach, you can arrange the flow of events so that the reader gets a flow of the events. This approach will prevent you from confusing the reader of your essay with a chaotic collection of events.

Keep the body of the essay focused and relevant

The body of your essay should contain a vivid explanation of the experiences and the impact it has had on you and people around you. In addition, you should show the reader what character you portray through the way you handled the experience and your ability to cope with such in the future.

 Write using the first-person narrative

The essay is written from a personal perspective and reflective of your behavior. Therefore, a first-person narrative is used when writing the essay since you are writing from a personal experience.

Choose vocabulary carefully

When writing the essay, always choose the most appropriate vocabulary that portrays the feelings and emotions that the reader can easily relate to .

Be honest with your feelings and opinions

The essays are about feelings and emotions; thus, you need to be honest in your writing. The reader expects a deep reflection of your honest experiences, feelings, and opinions.

 Use a variety of punctuation

In your writing, you can engage a lot of punctuation to keep your writing lively. In addition, including expressions in your writing will create a clear picture for your reader about the experiences in your writing.

Use wider sources

A reflective paper is about personal experience, but you are free to refer to outside sources related to your writing experience. Referencing a broader source to validate your experiences show deep understanding and research on your writing topic. Also, analyze other sources such as books, journals, newspapers, and magazines for experiences. Quoting from comprehensive sources also indicates your knowledge about the topic that you are writing about.

Consider tone and structure

A reflective paper is written from a personal experience, and it carries a personal tone. Therefore, the essay should follow the standard format and structure for writing essays.

Reflective Paper Samples

Reflective essays are an important type of writing that you can use to understand various experiences by profoundly analyzing the situations. They allow you to openly discuss your honest opinions, experiences, and personality to help draw important lessons learned from a past event and determine areas of improvement.

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Introducing reflection as an assignment

Using reflective assignments can be a great way of synthesising learning and challenging the status quo. This page outlines some of the things to keep in mind when posing reflective assignments.

In higher education or professional develop initiatives it is very common to have some sort of assignment. These are typically written but can also take other forms. This page will go through the main considerations for posing reflective assignments.

The main points covered are:

• finding and communicating the purpose of your assignment
• being clear both to yourself and to reflector what you want in the assignment
• the difference between ‘reflection’ and ‘evidence of reflection’
• choosing your criteria
• providing students support and spending time practicing can be valuable as most students are new to reflection.

Back to alignment – find the purpose of the assignment and communicate it

It should be clear to participants or students what the purpose of the assignment is. Why are you asking them to do this particular assignment? You will have had to think about the value of it.

This value can be described in the guidelines of the reflective assignment where you communicate how it will help reflectors either evidence their learning or obtain learning outcomes. From the guidelines it should be clear to students what the value of completing and doing well on the assignment is.

Be clear what you are asking

When posing a reflective assignment it is very important that you know from the beginning exactly what you are asking. Reflective writing/responses can typically take on two distinct forms:

• reflection,
• evidence of reflection.

The distinction between the two is vital when deciding the type of assignment you want to pose. These are outlined below.

Reflection - the actual process of examining thoughts

If you want to see the detailed aspects of reflectors’ thought processes, and want to follow each step in their reasoning, concerns, and learnings, ask the reflectors to submit their actual reflections.

The benefits is that you ensure that reflectors go through the process themselves and you can directly assess the quality. As this is the actual process we want the reflectors to complete, asking for raw reflections is the easiest way to ensure or get evidence that the process is happening.

One challenge when posing this kind of assignment is that some people might find it too personal to share this intimate process – it can become self-disclosure. A personal reflective account can be uncomfortable to show to anyone, and even more so to someone who is in a position of authority.

Evidence of reflection

In contrast, ‘evidence of reflection’ is documenting the effects of reflection, but does not require documenting the process explicitly.

Hence, rather than writing the thoughts and feelings of a situation, the reflector will state the context and what learning they found in the experience. In the purest form, there is no need to document any challenging or self-disclosing feelings. It is more akin to describing the effects of a reflection and rationally, in contrast to emotionally, explaining why the learning is valuable.

The benefit of this is that reflectors are less likely to feel that they are self-disclosing. However, when we are looking at evidence of reflection rather than reflection itself, it is more difficult to assess the reflectors ability to actually reflect. Therefore, good evidence of reflection is when learning is explicitly stated and it is highlighted how the learning will be used in the future.

It is important to be aware that there is a risk, albeit minimal, that a reflector can produce good evidence of reflection, without having done any reflection. For example, a reflector may write that they learned to start assignments earlier and will do so in the future, without actually having engaged with reflection at all – they might just guess that ‘starting assignments earlier’ is a possible conclusion you want to see.

Most assignments are a balance of ‘reflection’ and ‘evidence of reflection’

In reality, very few assignments will be a either pure ‘reflection’ or ‘evidence of reflection’. The goal for you is to find the right balance. Once you know what you want, you should be clear to reflectors about what being successful in the assignment looks like.

The easiest way to demonstrate what good looks like is to provide the reflectors with clear guidelines and examples of the type of reflections you are looking for. You can either write examples yourself or have a look through the Reflectors’ Toolkit, where each of the models have at least one example. You will likely find an example there that can be helpful for you.

List of tools for reflection (in Reflectors’ Toolkit) (LINK)

Reflection is just like any other assignment – avoid vagueness

The need for clear assignment directions is essential in all areas of higher education, however having the discussion specifically for reflection is important. This is because when posing a reflective assignment it can feel easy to consider reflection as ‘special’ and separate from common ‘good academic practice’ and therefore that it does not require the same levels of direction as a general assignment. Reflection should be considered on equal terms with general academic practice and will often require more support as many reflectors are new to the concept.

One reason vague reflection assignments are easy to pose is that they do not seem to restrict the reflectors’ freedom about how to reflect. In contrast, if we provide them with clear requirements and directions it might seem that we do restrict reflection. There is an element of truth in that. If we require as written assignment using a specific model of reflection, we do take some freedom away from the reflectors, at least in how they present their reflections to us. In practice, they can easily produce a private reflection and restructure it according to your question and requirements.

If we do not give the reflectors the structure they need, one challenge is that a high proportion of them might produce reflections not meeting our ideas of sufficient or good.

Posing a reflective assignment saying ‘Reflect on your development and learning in the course in 1000 words’ might seem like a fair question to ask. But compare that to asking them to ‘write an academic essay about the concepts you learned in this course in 1000 words’ and it should be clear why guidelines are important. It is easy to imagine how students would struggle to prioritise and produce an essay with relevant content from the vague essay prompt. This is similar for a vaguely posed reflective assignment without accompanying clear guidelines. How are the reflectors going to guess what we expect from them?

Most people are new to structured reflection

In higher education, most people have an idea of what an essay is supposed to look like because we are taught essay writing from an early age in school. In contrast, most people have never done structured reflection before university, and then are not likely to be thoroughly instructed in how to do or present it. It follows that if we are vague in our instructions we may receive assignments of very varying qualities.

Thus, to be fair to the reflectors and to us as facilitators, be clear and have clear guidelines available. You can ask very broad reflective questions, but you should be ready to support the reflectors and both your criteria and rubrics (if you chose to assess) should be extremely robust.

Providing training/introductions to students is useful

As most people are new to reflection starting in university, when you introduce reflection it can helpful to: provide a thorough written guide of what reflection is, provide people with resources (for example the Reflectors’ Toolkit), and/or spend time in person introducing reflectors to structured reflection and what you expect from reflections.

Find your criteria and your rubric

Once you have a clear assignment, it is important you think about what you want to measure it against, i.e. the criteria. This discussion is also highlighted in the ‘Assessing reflection’ section of the Facilitators’ Toolkit with specific criteria as suggestions.

Moreover, if you decide to use summative assessment for the assignments, you will need to have a clear rubric (criteria broken down into levels of performance). It is good practice to publish both the criteria and rubric to the reflectors prior to assessing them.

To see at what point criteria and rubrics become essential, see ‘Should I assess?’

Assessing reflection (within the Facilitators’ Toolkit)

Should I assess? (within the Facilitators’ Toolkit)

Back to 'How do I introduce reflection?'

Free Printable Reflective Writing Worksheets for 7th Grade

Reflective Writing worksheets for Grade 7 Reading & Writing teachers! Discover a variety of free printable resources to enhance your students' learning experience and develop their writing skills.

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Explore printable Reflective Writing worksheets for 7th Grade

Reflective Writing worksheets for Grade 7 are an essential tool for teachers looking to enhance their students' reading and writing skills. These worksheets are specifically designed to help students in Grade 7 develop their abilities in analyzing and understanding various texts, both fiction and nonfiction. By engaging in reflective writing exercises, students can improve their critical thinking, comprehension, and communication skills. Teachers can use these worksheets to guide students through the process of examining their thoughts and feelings about the texts they read, as well as helping them to articulate their ideas clearly and effectively. Nonfiction writing, in particular, can be a challenging area for students, but with the support of these Grade 7 worksheets, teachers can provide the necessary guidance and practice to help their students excel in this important aspect of their education.

Quizizz is an excellent platform for teachers to utilize in conjunction with Reflective Writing worksheets for Grade 7 students. This interactive tool offers a wide range of features that can enhance the learning experience for students, including quizzes, games, and other engaging activities. By incorporating Quizizz into their lesson plans, teachers can create a more dynamic and interactive learning environment that encourages students to actively participate in their education. In addition to the Reflective Writing worksheets, Quizizz offers a variety of resources for teaching reading and writing skills, including materials focused on nonfiction writing. This comprehensive approach to teaching Grade 7 students ensures that they receive a well-rounded education in reading and writing, setting them up for success in their future academic endeavors.