Writing Workshop Writing a Reflective Essay Assignment Prewriting Think About Purpose Choose an Experience Reflect on Your Subject Gather and Record Details Organize Your Reflective Essay Practice and Apply Feature Menu

Assignment: Write a 1,500-word reflective essay in which you explore the meaning of an important experience. Writing a Reflective Essay When you have a significant experience, you usually know it right away. You might think to yourself, “Wow, I never saw it this way before.” Writing a reflective essay gives you a chance to explore how an important experience has changed you or your ideas about life. [End of Section]

When you write a reflective essay, your purpose is to Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Think About Purpose explore the meaning of a personal experience examine how the experience changed you tell what the experience says about life in general [End of Section]

Think about your most important personal experiences: Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Choose an Experience What significant events have you participated in or witnessed? What unusual conditions have you encountered? What special concerns have you had?

If an experience doesn’t come to mind right away,... Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Choose an Experience look through old yearbooks, photos, or journals for ideas read some reflective essays or poems Make sure to choose an experience you’ll feel comfortable sharing with an audience.

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Choose an Experience The flash flooding that hit our community last fall was a significant, life-changing experience I would like to explore and share. [End of Section]

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject Your reflective essay should help you examine abstract ideas—love, patience, courage lead you to a new understanding of your beliefs about life and people

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject How does (or did) the experience affect me? I experienced a sense of awe at the destructive power of nature. This was a new feeling for me. It is different to see a natural disaster in real life than to watch special effects in a movie. Consider questions like these as you reflect on your experience.

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject How did the experience change my attitudes or behaviors? Being stranded at the community center and not being able to go home or get in touch with my parents gave me a new appreciation for my home and family.

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject What universal truth or insight into human existence did the experience teach me? I learned that the most catastrophic events can bring out the best qualities in people—courage, cooperation, kindness, leadership. [End of Section]

Then, make a list of all the events. Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Gather and Record Details each event from beginning to end. Recall the events that made up the experience: to someone else who was there. through mementos—photographs, letters, souvenirs. Visualize Talk Look

Record narrative and descriptive details about each event. These details will help you create concrete images in the minds of your readers. Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Gather and Record Details Narrative details relate actions, thoughts, and feelings of the people involved in the events I saw a young girl wade through water up to her waist to rescue a cat from her neighbor’s porch.

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Gather and Record Details Narrative details include dialogue, the actual words spoken by people involved in the experience, and interior monologue, your thoughts during the experience “I just hope my dog is okay,” Diego whispered to me. “I love that dog more than anything else in the world.” “When will we be able to call our families?” I wondered silently.

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Gather and Record Details Descriptive details describe the way people look Some of the last people to arrive at the center had been rescued from cars or homes. Most had been provided with dry, but ill-fitting, clothes. They carried their own clothes in plastic sacks. Many of them still seemed to be in shock.

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Gather and Record Details Descriptive details describe settings of events By this time the community center was crowded with evacuees. There were no cots and very few chairs. We tried to sleep on blankets on the hardwood floor of the gymnasium, but very few people actually slept that night. We could hear news pouring out of radios all night long.

Throughout your essay... Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Gather and Record Details maintain a balance in the events. (Don’t spend all your time narrating just one event.) describe your thoughts and feelings to hint at the meaning of the experience As you narrate each event... state the significance of the experience In your conclusion... connect the experience to abstract ideas [End of Section]

Arrange the events in chronological order—the order in which they occurred. Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Organize Your Reflective Essay You might want to vary the chronological order by using flashbacks and flash-forwards.flashbacksflash-forwards What Happened First What Happened Second What Happened Third... and so on

Within chronological order, you can use other organizational patterns for certain purposes. Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Organize Your Reflective Essay Spatial Order Order of Importance Good for describing places, people, or objects Details arranged by location in space— top to bottom, near to far, and so on Good for discussing effects and ideas Points arranged from most important to least important, or vice versa [End of Section]

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Practice and Apply First, choose a subject for your reflective essay. Then reflect upon your subject gather narrative and descriptive details organize your essay [End of Section]

explanations of factual information that relate to an important part of your experience or to life in general As you reflect on the significance of your experience, think about Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Reflect on Your Subject the narrative—the events that occurred descriptions of sights and sounds that contribute to your overall impression strategies you might use to persuade someone of the deeper meaning of your experience

A flashback takes readers back to an event that occurred before the story’s action. Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Organize Your Reflective Essay first event second event third event event from the past flashback return to action of main story

Writing a Reflective Essay Prewriting: Organize Your Reflective Essay A flash-forward jumps ahead in time, skipping intervening events. first event second event third event event in the future flash-forward, skipping events back to main action