As teachers, we ask students to reflect so that they can practice critical thinking, see connections between different learning experiences, and synthesize information with their future or professional goals. Reflective writing fosters students’ awareness of their habits of thinking and helps them to develop and solidify productive ways of approaching problems. Students experiencing labs might be able to describe what they are seeing, but they need guidance from more experienced scientific professionals to reflect on lab experiences.

Critical Thinking through Reflection’ focuses on evidence of critical thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation, creation) as it exists in within artifacts, arrangement, and reflective writing and across the ePortfolio as a whole. The following table enlists a rubric for evaluation of the aforementioned three aspects of the ePortfolio (i.e. artifacts, arrangement, and reflective writing) and details the characteristics of each aspect from a beginner to a professional level.

During our first workshop, you learned about transparent assignment design. In brief, we discussed assignments that name the purpose (skills practiced, knowledge gained), the task (what students will do and steps to accomplish it), and the criteria for success (a checklist or rubric). During our second workshop, you learned about reflective writing, a tool for helping students make sense of their learning experience through description, connection, prediction/application, critique/analysis, and condensing for external audiences.

Below are three example reflective writing assignments from different disciplines, each fostering a different learning goal related to reflective practice.

A checklist in teacher language used to assess elementary students’ expressive writing as they work on activities and projects.

What is expressive writing? Expressive writing involves writing down current thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, insights, gratitudes, and more. It is writing without regard for typical writing conventions, such as sentence flow or organization. This type of writing involves being in touch with the present moment, focusing on yourself.

Why use expressive writing? Research has shown that expressive writing helps to manage anxieties, reduce stress, and cope with depression or life events. This technique is helpful as it allows you to externalize your thoughts and stressors, not carrying them around. This allows individuals to separate themselves from their problems. Often times, this helps to view the environment different or solve problems.

This handout introduces you to the six Rs of reflection: reporting, responding, relating, reasoning, reconstructing, and repackaging. Bain, J., Ballantyne, R., Mills, C. & Lester, N. (2002) labeled these levels with the mnemonic “5 Rs of reflection.” We have added a sixth level to this framework to account for the way reflection moves into other genres, such as an ePortfolio or personal narrative.

This handout will take you through a heuristic process aimed at developing an effective reflective writing assignment for students keeping in mind the expected learning outcomes.

Once you’ve developed your reflective writing prompt, this peer reviewguide can help you get feedback.

This workbook provides an introduction to reflective practice in education and offers supporting activities to enable and compose reflective writing.

This worksheet provides examples of student reflections in need of feedback and guidance which you can use to practice providing feedback that helps students improve their reflective writing

In addition to descriptions of your skills, experiences, and knowledge, your ePortfolio should also include reflective writing. Reflective writing allows you to articulate why an experience is important, what you learned during the process, and how you plan to apply your skills to future projects or endeavors. Below are examples of topics you could discuss in your reflective writing. As you craft your reflective writing, try to answer at least one question from each category.

Reflection can take many different forms, and any number of strategies can help you support students’ reflective practices. This handout lists various prompts and questions you can adapt to your specific course context and objectives.