– Be honest with your feelings and opinions. Remember that this is a reflective task, and is the one place you can freely admit – without any repercussions – that you failed at a particular task. When assessing your essay, your tutor will expect a deep level of reflection, not a simple review of your experiences and emotion. Showing deep reflection requires you to move beyond the descriptive. Be extremely critical about your experience and your response to it. In your evaluation and analysis, ensure that you make value judgements, incorporating ideas from outside the experience you had to guide your analysis. Remember that you can be honest about your feelings without writing in a direct way. Use words that work for you and are aligned with your personality.
A focus on personal growth:
A type of reflective essay often used by tutors as a strategy for helping students to learn how to analyse their personal life experiences to promote emotional growth and development. The essay gives the student a better understanding of both themselves and their behaviours.
Think of the outline as a map – you plan in advance the points you wish to navigate through and discuss in your writing. Your work will more likely have a clear through line of thought, making it easier for the reader to understand. It’ll also help you avoid missing out any key information, and having to go back at the end and try to fit it in.
– Don’t think too much about how to start your first sentence or paragraph
Writing your essay
Consider using models of reflection before, during, and after the learning process to ensure that you maintain a high standard of analysis. For example, before you really get stuck into the process, consider questions such as: what might happen (regarding the experience)? Are there any possible challenges to keep in mind? What knowledge is needed to be best prepared to approach the experience? Then, as you’re planning and writing, these questions may be useful: what is happening within the learning process? Is the process working out as expected? Am I dealing with the accompanying challenges successfully? Is there anything that needs to be done additionally to ensure that the learning process is successful? What am I learning from this? By adopting such a framework, you’ll be ensuring that you are keeping tabs on the reflective process that should underpin your work.
– For every point you make about an experience or event, support it by describing how you were directly impacted, using specific as opposed to vague words to convey exactly how you felt.
This is an especially important step when you’re tackling a reflective essay – there can be a tendency for people to get a little ‘lost’ or disorganised as they recount their life experiences in an erratic and often unsystematic manner. But if you develop a thorough outline (this is the same as a ‘plan’) and ensure you stick to it like Christopher Columbus to a map, you should do just fine as you embark on the ultimate step of writing your essay. If you need further convincing on how important planning is, we’ve summarised the key benefits of creating a detailed essay outline below:
– What have you learned about yourself as a result of the experience?
Reflective essay writing might be tough, but you can easily write the essay with the right outline. Some students have too little time, and they are overloaded with essay writing tasks. They cannot give appropriate time to essay writing.
In conclusion, restate the thesis statement and rewrite the main points. It is the closing part of the essay, and it must be concise. Inform the reader of your final opinion about the topic.
- Use the outline for your daily entries.
- Avoid repetitive sentences in the essay.
- State your own opinion in the essay.
- Make sure that you have supported every moment that seemed unclear to you before.
- Use transition words between paragraphs.
- Include all the key points in the outline.
- Don’t use complex words in the essay and present your point of view.
- Know the strong points that you need to showcase in the essay.
- Proofread and edit the essay before submitting or publishing it.
It is the first statement that the reader read and decide to read the entire essay or not. The hook statement should start with a quote or an interesting question.
Tips on Writing the Reflective Essay
Start the body paragraph with a topic sentence and explain the main idea. The reflective essay body paragraph is categorized into three paragraphs, like other essays.
The thesis statement describes what the essay is all about. It is your entire essay’s core statement, and it is called “reflective essay thesis.” The thesis statement is all about places, events, experiences, and thoughts described further in the essay.
The essay’s conclusion paragraph should be the finishing touch that brings the complete piece of the writing together. It contains two parts that make the essay successful.
If you write the reflective essay for the first time, get help from these examples and craft a good essay. These examples will help in your writing the perfect reflective essay.
- How would you describe the project to someone else?
- What were your first reactions? How have other people reacted to it?
- Was the project easy? What aspects were easy and why? What aspect was the hardest and why?
- What are the key issues? What points were the most interesting to you?
- What would you like to explore after the event?
- How can skills that you have acquired during the project be compared to others
- How has this project changed your view on life/technology/etc.?
- What did you know about the topic related to the project before the start?
- Have you used additional sources of information to go deeper with understanding the topic?
- How will this project be useful in your college activities?
The desire to learn is formed in the process of successful work on the material, therefore it is important to organize individual assistance in such a way that the student constantly feels progress is moving ahead. Experience has shown that often even a slight advancement inspires students, stimulates them to work more intensively, and increases interest in studies, and this ensures their successful mastering of the material. Individual work with students is first of all constant attention to each of them in the course of the lesson: during the interview of students, in the process of exposition and fixing of the material, as well as in explaining the homework.
So, how to write a reflective journal? You will need to create daily entries with descriptions of your tasks or procedures and your personal reflections on such.
- Receiving an unfinished proposal, thesis, or selection of aphorism.
- Reflection on the achievement of the goal using the goal tree, assessing the “increment” of knowledge and achieving the goals (“I did not know before the…” “Now I know…”).
- The reception of the cinquain, which helps to clarify the attitude to the problem under study, to connect the old knowledge and understanding of the new.
Tips on Reflective Writing
Step 6. Create an outline. Creating a reflective essay outline will allow you to structure all your thoughts in a certain order. With the help of an outline you won’t find yourself struggling to add important parts to a previously completed paper. An outline is like a map of your future essay. If you want to come to a certain destination and at a particular time, you need to plan your trip. The same thing is true with an essay outline: to be able to finish writing before the deadline, you need a plan of action. Collect all information that arises in your mind and determine the points that stand out.
Note: The final sentence of each paragraph summarizes and restates the idea introduced at the start of the paragraph.
The tutor is not required to read a boring text, especially if students are writing a paper on a similar topic. Be unique and start you essay in an extraordinary way.
- Become a better writer.
- Gain better reflective thinking.
- Improve problem-solving abilities.
- Develop professional orientation and understanding of the educational program.
In a reflective essay, it is better to give a deeper and meaningful experience to the reader. Write about nature also makes your writing process interesting and takes you to the imagination world.
Write a reflective essay about a place that you have really good and strong memories are easy to write. Here are some topic ideas that you can use and write an essay on it.
Choose the reflective essay topic on a subject that you know. It will be easier to write an essay about a topic that you find interesting and experience with it. Never choose a topic that is new to you
- An amazing family reunion
- When you first spoke in public
- The role of friendship in my life
- When your parents punished you
- Family reunion
- When you told someone that you were sorry
- A time you spent with friends without parental supervision
- Describe your relationship with a family member
- A conversation when you became very angry
- The time when you had a long laugh
Reflective Essay Topics for High School Students
The reflective essay topics should link to strong emotions and memories. For example, you can write an essay about a day at your favorite cafe, favorite place to eat, etc.
For your convenience, here is a list of some excellent reflective essay topics for college students. Choose from them and create a well-written essay.
- Climbing the mountains
- Diving in the ocean
- Walking in the woods
- Rock climbing
- Looking at the sunset
- Running in the forest.
- Quality time with your pet
- Taking a hike through a forest
- Swimming in a lake
- Watching animals at a zoo
The selection of an interesting topic is the first step in writing the perfect reflective essay. The reflective essay topics are personal and would come from your personal experience. With your personal experience, you can offer something unique to your readers.
The essay introduction is based on your experiences, feelings, and situations. When you start writing the reflective paper introduction, focus on the main parts that make your introduction a good one.
Reflective essay writing might be tough, but you can easily write the essay with the right outline. Some students have too little time, and they are overloaded with essay writing tasks. They cannot give appropriate time to essay writing.
Here is a guide that helps you in creating the perfect reflective essay outline.
It is the first statement that the reader read and decide to read the entire essay or not. The hook statement should start with a quote or an interesting question.
Reflective Essay Body Paragraphs -
- Introduction
- Attention-grabbing hook
- Overview of the topic
- Thesis statement
- Body Paragraphs
- Paragraph 1 with a detailed description of event, person, or place
- Paragraph 2 with a description of thoughts and feelings
- Paragraph 3 with analysis and evaluation of the experience
- Conclusion
- Summary of the essay
- Restate the thesis statement
The body paragraph is the next section after the introduction. Writing the body paragraphs is sometimes time-consuming if you have not prepared the perfect outline.
The essay’s conclusion paragraph should be the finishing touch that brings the complete piece of the writing together. It contains two parts that make the essay successful.