reflective essay in an online class

Writing a reflective

essay

Sharing your experience . . .Writing their essays, Emerson and Thoreau reflected upon basic truths about life that they derived from personal experience.

Writing Reflective Essays

Sharing your experience . . .Emerson wrote, “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist,” still prods us as learners to examine our lives today.


Sharing your experience . . .Like Emerson and Thoreau, as learners you, too, have experiences from which you learn important lessons.


Sharing your experience . . .A reflective essay describes a personal experience and explores its significance.


B a s i c s i n a B o x

Reflective Essay at a Glance

RUBRIC Standards for WritingA successful reflective essay for Assignment 6.1a should• be written in the first person• describe a personal learning

experience in this class and use figurative language, dialogue, sensory details, or other techniques to re-create the experience for the reader

• explain the significance of the event

• make an observation about life and/or the learning process based on the experience

• consider how your observation of the experience will affect your future learning process.

Writing Your Reflective Essay

Think about the learning activities in this course.

List some of your memorable experiences as you worked.

You might look through your assignments to help jog your memory.

1 PrewritingTo find ideas for your essay

Writing Your Reflective Essay

Make a list of events or assignments, that inspired you.

Jot down some notes to demonstrate your understanding & insights gained (compare/contrast, cause & effect, etc.)

1 PrewritingTo find ideas for your essay

Planning Your Reflective Essay

Think about your learning experience.

1.Why do you remember a specific learning experience more clearly than others?

2.What different emotions did you go through during the experience? (cause & effect)

3. Did your emotions change as you worked? (compare/contrast)

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Explore the significance.

4. What is the significance of your experience?

5. What were the effects on what you did or did not do?

6. What is the most obvious meaning to you?

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7. What else did your experience teach you?

8. What might you do differently if faced with a similar situation again?

9. Keep exploring to uncover as many levels of meaning as you can.

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10. Decide on the scope of your essay. Will you dwell on one example in-depth or relate several events to create your essay?

11. Decide on the message you want to convey. How will you apply the meaning of the experience to your life?

2

Writing Your Reflective Essay3 Drafting

Begin Writing You might write about your experience

as though you were writing a journal entry.

You may want to begin your draft by trying out a variety of ideas.

Let your ideas flow even though you sense problems you may need to address later.


Organize Your Essay Start your paper with an account of your

experience & then explain its significance.

Go on to discuss the larger lesson that the experience has taught you.

Or, begin with the larger lesson you want to share with your readers & describe the experience that helped you learn this lesson.


Organize Your Essay Or you could begin with the larger

lesson you want to share with your readers & then describe the experience that helped you learn this lesson.


Elaborate on Ideas Precise, vivid language will help you

convey the lesson about the learning process that you want to explain.

After you write a rough draft of your whole essay, set it aside for a while.


After a few days go back to review & to revise the essay.

Taking a fresh look will help you see problems that you may have overlooked.

Writing Your Reflective Essay4 Final Essay

Review your essay against the rubric. REMINDER:

If you refer to information that is taken from a source which you should cite, you must include your reference section at the end of your essay with proper citations.

References:

McDougal, Littell. (2015). The Language of Literature Power Point Presentations. Retrieved from myteacherpages.com/webpages/.../unit3pt1%20reflective%20essay.ppt

Nicolls, B. (February 2, 2013). How to write a reflective essay). Retrieved from Slide

Share. http://www.slideshare.net/b.nicolls/how-to-write-a-reflective-essay

reflective essay in an online class

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