Reflective Writing For Students

What is Reflective Writing?

Experts practice reflective writing daily. This means that you will too! Watch this video to understand why reflective writing is important to your education.

What is reflective writing?

Reflective writing is a process that encourages students to look at what they are learning from all angles.

Benefits

Learn for life

Transfer skills

Prepare for career

Humanities

Think of what you want to be after you graduate. Maybe you want to be a heart surgeon or software engineer. Maybe a teacher or business owner. Whatever you want to be, you will have to understand how to reflect. Let’s say you want to be a heart surgeon. Before you go into a surgery, you have to know what you need to do and why. You will reflect on previous surgeries or things you learned in school or residency. Then, you will plan on how that previous knowledge will play into this future surgery. This process is exactly what you do with reflective writing. Reflective writing will prepare you for the future while helping you expand the knowledge you are currently learning.

STUDENT EXAMPLES

What Does it Look Like?

Humanities Example

Assignment: Make a 5-minute presentation about BYU’s founder, Brigham Young. Give a brief description of his life and then mostly focus on how he started BYU. Upon finishing your presentation, follow the reflective writing model and write about your experience making and presenting these slides.

I enjoy making presentations, so I liked being able to get creative on this assignment. It was also easy to find pictures and background info on Brigham Young. It was challenging, however, to narrow down information on his life in only a few slides. I also get nervous presenting in front of people, so I struggled preparing to present. This project taught me new things about Brigham Young and myself. I felt more connected to my university by learning about the founder and I learned new things about his life that I did not know before. I also learned that even when I am nervous about presenting, I can still do a good job. Several of my peers told me after class that my presentation was great, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that even though I felt nervous the whole time. If I were to do this project again, I would ask my professor for clarification on how to narrow down information before I start working on the project. In the future, I plan to use the newfound confidence I gained from presenting in my other classes and job opportunities.

STEM Example

Assignment: Make a 5-minute presentation about BYU’s founder, Brigham Young. Give a brief description of his life and then mostly focus on how he started BYU. Upon finishing your presentation, follow the reflective writing model and write about your experience making and presenting these slides.

I enjoy making presentations, so I liked being able to get creative on this assignment. It was also easy to find pictures and background info on Brigham Young. It was challenging, however, to narrow down information on his life in only a few slides. I also get nervous presenting in front of people, so I struggled preparing to present. This project taught me new things about Brigham Young and myself. I felt more connected to my university by learning about the founder and I learned new things about his life that I did not know before. I also learned that even when I am nervous about presenting, I can still do a good job. Several of my peers told me after class that my presentation was great, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that even though I felt nervous the whole time. If I were to do this project again, I would ask my professor for clarification on how to narrow down information before I start working on the project. In the future, I plan to use the newfound confidence I gained from presenting in my other classes and job opportunities.

Reflective Writing Tips

When writing a reflective writing assignment, always look back on the reflective writing and make sure you are covering all three parts:

What?
So what?
Now what?

Download Practice Prompt