Sharing your experience . . . Reflective Essay Sharing your experience . . . We often gain new insights and knowledge by living through experiences, but we also do the same by reflecting on and communicating those experiences in writing

Sharing your experience . . . Reflective Essay Sharing your experience . . . From Reading to Writing In their essays, Emerson and Thoreau reflect upon some basic truths about life that they derived from personal experience. Emerson’s words, “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist,” still prod us to examine our lives today.

Sharing your experience . . . Reflective Essay Sharing your experience . . . Like Emerson and Thoreau, you, too, have experiences from which you learn important lessons. A reflective essay describes a personal experience and explores its significance. Autobiographies, letters, and memoirs often include reflective writing that gives insight into the writer’s action.

B a s i c s i n a B o x Reflective Essay at a Glance RUBRIC Standards for Writing A successful reflective essay should be written in the first person describe an important experience or experiences in your life use figurative language, dialogue, sensory details, or other techniques to re-create the experience for the reader explain the significance of the event or events make an observation about life or human nature based on the experience encourage readers to think about the significance of the experience in light of their own lives

Writing Your Reflective Essay 1 Prewriting To find ideas for your essay You have answered some questions, hopefully with support and details. (meaning, you answered the “hows” and the “whys”) If you haven’t done this yet, try listing some memorable experiences that brought you to be the person you are today, beliefs and all. If you are still stuck: look through family photograph albums to help jog your memory. Make a list of people who inspire you. What have these people done to earn your admiration?

Decisions, Decisions! Now, you must review everything you brainstormed and make a decision of what you want the FOCUS of your essay to be…

Planning Your Reflective Essay 1. Think about your experience. Why do you remember this experience(s) more clearly than others? What different emotions did you go through during the experience(s)? Did your emotions change? How did it contribute to TODAY’S YOU. 2. Explore the significance. What is the significance of your experience(s)? What is the most obvious meaning to you? What else did your experience(s) teach you? Keep exploring to uncover as many levels of meaning as you can.

Planning Your Reflective Essay 3.Decide on the scope of your essay. Will you focus on one example in-depth or relate several events to create the impression you want? 4.Decide on the message you want to convey. How can you encourage your readers to apply the meaning of the experience to their own lives?

Writing Your Reflective Essay 2 Drafting Begin Writing You might write about your experience as though you were writing a journal entry. Or, you may want to begin your draft by trying out a variety of ideas. Let your ideas flow even though you sense problems you’ll need to address later.

Writing Your Reflective Essay 2 Drafting Organize Your Essay Start your paper with an account of your experience or separate experiences and then explain its/their significance. From that point, go on to discuss the larger lesson about life that the experience has taught you. Or, begin with the larger lesson you want to share with your readers and then describe the experience that helped you learn this lesson.

If you are not sure, look at some other sample essays… Or look back at Emerson and Thoreau’s essays that we just studied.

Writing Your Reflective Essay 2 Drafting Elaborate on Ideas Precise, vivid language will help you convey the lesson about life you want to explain. After you write a rough draft of your whole essay, set it aside for a while before you go back to revise it. Taking a fresh look will help you see problems that you may have overlooked.

WRONG! Rough Draft Due Date: Draft 1 is due Wednesday/Thursday, October 5th/6th. This is the week right before break. You must have this with you both: printed out on googledocs with access to it. Points will be taken off if you do not have access to your draft. WRONG!

Writing Your Reflective Essay 3 Revising Revising Lessons will come later

Writing Your Reflective Essay 4 Editing and Proofreading