Expressive and Reflective Writing

From the desk of Carol C…

“We do not learn so much from experience as we do from reflecting on our experience.” ~ John Dewey

Have you ever been a candidate for National Boards or know someone who has?  If the answer is yes, then you know to become National Board certified you must be able to master expressive and reflective writing.  Each required entry for National Boards requires both types of writing.

Expressive writing is personal and shows our thoughts, ideas, and feelings about an experience.  Reflective writing goes beyond just sharing an experience or something the writer has learned.  Reflective writing requires the author to look back at the past and apply what he or she has learned to the future.  A well-known example of these types of writing is journal writing.

One vehicle for teaching beginning reflective writing at any grade level is the portfolio.  First students pick a piece of work from the week, quarter, or semester they would like to keep in a yearlong portfolio.  Then the easiest way to begin reflection is to give the students a form to fill out.  The form could have questions such as:  Why did you choose this piece of work for your portfolio?  What did you do well?  What needs to be improved upon?  What realistic goal might you set for yourself for the future?

Here’s a sample reflection from a sixth grader:

Why did you choose this piece of work for your portfolio?

I chose this math paper because it shows where I wrote about my thinking.  What did you do well?  I remember thinking really hard about how to find the least common denominator.  Also,  I wrote in complete sentences. 

What needs to be improved upon?

Next time I need to write even more of my thinking.  This time I left out some of it, so it’s harder to understand where my mind was going. 

What realistic goal might you set for yourself for the future?

I need to write down each thought I have in order and not leave anything out even if I get tired of writing.  Then I might be able to understand even harder problems if I understand my thinking on these problems.

Kindergarten reflection dictated to teacher:

Why did you choose this piece of work for your portfolio?  It shows I can make patterns. 

What did you do well?  I made 5 patterns.

What can you improve next time?  I can make lots more different patterns. 

What realistic goal might you set for yourself for the future?  Learn to make patterns with numbers like my sister.

 

As these examples show the sophistication level expected depends on the age of the students and the experience they have had with reflective and expressive writing.  Lower grades students could dictate their thoughts or draw pictures to answer the questions.

Another way to bring in authentic expressive and reflective writing is through group work.  Again you would give your students a set of questions to answer after completing some group work.  The  questions could be something like these:  What was your group’s assigned task.  What did you learn?  What did you contribute?  What could you do differently next time to make your learning even better?  What do you want to learn now?  Why?

Here is a sample from a 7th grader who was required to write his answers in paragraph form.

Today we had to get together in a group to discuss reasons some countries are not as economically and technologically advanced as others.  I learned that location makes a difference in how much money a country can make and how much technology they can buy.  Also, the kind of government a country has makes a difference.  I didn’t contribute anything because I didn’t know anything.  Next time I need to read what my teacher tells me to before I have a group meeting.  I want to learn why the location makes a difference in how much money a country has.  Also, I want to see if this is true.  I want to learn about governments too.  Some countries have bad governments, but they are rich.

The other way the group work above could lend itself to an expressive and reflective writing activity would be to have the students tell about the ideas shared in the group and reflect more on the validity of these major ideas.

Another way to begin with reflective writing is to give students fill in the blank sentences:

I like_____________because__________________________________.

 

_______________ is hard for me because________________________.

 

Sometimes I _________________because__________________________.

A few examples of real world reflection include:

• a doctor looking at the facts and then reflecting on those facts to figure out why a patient can’t shake a cold
• a teacher reflecting on her lesson plan and deciding how to change it to reach more students
• a contractor going back over the building materials needed for a project and then reflecting on how she can cut her costs and those of the consumer next time
• a basketball player who needs to improve his free throw shooting percentage reflects on what he should do differently

All of the ideas above are ways to begin to teach expressive and reflective writing.  As your students begin to grow into deeper reflection, you will introduce higher level assignments.  However, no matter the level of the writing task the only way your students will be successful is for you to model your thinking first!