How To Write a First Class Reflective Essay in 5 Simple Steps
Summary
TLDRIn this video, the speaker discusses how to write a strong reflective essay using the 5R framework, which includes reporting, responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing. They break down each step, emphasizing critical thinking, engagement with personal experiences, and how to incorporate relevant literature. The video is geared toward students, especially those in fields like nursing and media, and highlights common mistakes, such as failing to include academic references or future action plans. The speaker offers practical advice for enhancing the depth of reflective writing while stressing its academic rigor.
Takeaways
- 😀 The video focuses on writing a reflective essay, with the speaker providing tips on how to do this effectively.
- 📦 The speaker has recently moved, which explains the change in background and potential echo in the video.
- ✍️ Reflective essays involve critically analyzing a past event to extract learning points and plan future actions.
- 🔑 The 5R Framework for reflection is introduced as a useful structure for writing reflective essays.
- 📚 The 5R Framework includes Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Reconstructing.
- 📖 Reporting involves setting the scene by describing the event and context without giving personal interpretations.
- 🤔 Responding requires reflecting on personal thoughts and feelings about the event, using phrases like 'I thought' or 'I felt'.
- 🔗 Relating the experience to prior knowledge or relevant literature is crucial to link it with theoretical understanding.
- 💡 Reasoning is key to higher marks, involving deeper critical thinking and using literature to explain the event's outcome.
- 🎯 Reconstructing involves creating an action plan for future situations based on what was learned from the reflection.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the video?
-The main topic of the video is how to write a reflective essay using the 5R framework for reflection.
What is a reflective essay?
-A reflective essay is a type of essay where the writer critically analyzes a past experience or event, reflecting on it to draw conclusions, improve, and learn from it.
What does the 5R framework stand for?
-The 5R framework stands for Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Reconstructing.
Why is the 5R framework helpful for writing a reflective essay?
-The 5R framework is helpful because it guides writers through each step of reflection, helping them critically engage with their experience, connect it to relevant literature, and plan for future improvements.
What should be included in the 'Reporting' section of the essay?
-In the 'Reporting' section, the writer should provide context about the experience or event, explaining what happened, where it took place, who was involved, and their role in the situation.
How should feelings be incorporated into the reflective essay?
-Feelings should be incorporated in the 'Responding' section, where the writer reflects on how they felt during the event and shares their thoughts and emotions.
What is the purpose of the 'Relating' section?
-The 'Relating' section allows the writer to connect their experience to previous knowledge, skills, or literature, showing how the current event relates to past experiences or academic studies.
How can a writer strengthen the 'Reasoning' section of their reflective essay?
-The 'Reasoning' section can be strengthened by using theoretical frameworks and literature to explain why events occurred as they did and to explore different perspectives on the situation.
What is expected in the 'Reconstructing' section of the reflective essay?
-In the 'Reconstructing' section, the writer should outline how they will use the lessons learned from the reflection to improve their future actions, creating an action plan for similar situations.
What common mistakes do people make when writing reflective essays?
-Common mistakes include focusing too much on describing the event without critically analyzing it, not incorporating enough literature, and failing to provide a concrete plan for future actions.
Outlines
🏡 Moving to a New Space and Introducing Reflective Essay Writing
The speaker begins by addressing the new background in the video due to moving, apologizing for potential echoes as the space is still being decorated. They introduce the topic of writing a reflective essay, which is essential for critically analyzing past events or experiences to draw learning points. They plan to explain a framework, the '5R framework for reflection,' useful for writing strong reflective essays. This framework, developed by a researcher named Bane and his team, will guide the structure of a reflective essay.
🖋️ Introduction to Reflective Essay Models
The speaker emphasizes that while several models exist for writing reflective essays, the 5R framework stands out for encouraging deep engagement with experiences and critical thinking. Reflective essays not only describe situations but also connect them to literature, experiences, and emotions. The speaker highlights the importance of using such a framework to improve future experiences by reflecting on past ones. They also mention the inclusion of alternative models and resources for further reading.
📚 Breaking Down the 5R Framework for Reflection
The 5R framework consists of five key steps: Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Reconstructing. The speaker briefly explains each step, starting with 'Reporting,' which involves setting the context of the experience. 'Responding' involves discussing personal feelings and thoughts about the event. 'Relating' is where the experience is compared to current literature or knowledge. 'Reasoning' involves using theoretical aspects to interpret the situation, and finally, 'Reconstructing' focuses on planning future actions based on lessons learned.
📝 Step 1: Reporting - Setting the Scene
The first step in the 5R framework is 'Reporting,' which involves setting the scene for the event you're reflecting on. The speaker emphasizes the importance of providing context without interpretation. This section includes describing the situation, your role, and other key details without diving into emotions or analysis. Past tense should be used since you’re reflecting on a past event. The speaker highlights examples from nursing students who report their experiences during placements, noting that detailed context helps the reader understand the event.
💭 Step 2: Responding - Adding Thoughts and Emotions
'Responding' is the second step, where personal thoughts, feelings, and emotions are introduced. The speaker suggests using language that reflects your personal reaction to the event, such as 'I felt,' 'I thought,' or 'I believe.' They recommend connecting thoughts and feelings with sequential language (e.g., 'subsequently,' 'firstly') to guide the reader through the event. This part is about exploring the emotional and intellectual response to the situation without yet analyzing or interpreting its meaning.
🔗 Step 3: Relating - Connecting to Past Knowledge and Experience
'Relating' focuses on connecting the current experience to past knowledge, skills, or literature. The speaker advises reflecting on previous similar experiences and drawing comparisons or contrasts. This part uses comparative language like 'similarly' or 'differently' to explore how the current event aligns with or deviates from past experiences. The tense shifts to the present since you are reflecting now, even though the event is in the past. Critical thinking plays a key role in this step.
📖 Step 4: Reasoning - Analyzing Through Theory and Literature
In 'Reasoning,' the speaker explains the importance of using literature and theory to analyze and make sense of the event. This is a critical step that allows deeper academic reflection by applying subject-specific frameworks. The speaker gives an example from the nursing field, where literature might be used to explain proper procedures or behavior during a medical situation. Reflecting on multiple perspectives, such as how a qualified nurse would react differently from a student, also strengthens this section.
🔄 Step 5: Reconstructing - Planning for Future Improvement
The final step, 'Reconstructing,' is about developing future plans based on lessons learned from the reflection. The speaker stresses the importance of being honest and creating an action plan for how to approach similar experiences differently next time. They also encourage using literature to support the recommendations for future practice. The aim is to show clear learning and application, ensuring the reflection leads to real improvement and growth.
📚 Common Mistakes and Final Advice for Reflective Essays
The speaker wraps up by addressing common mistakes in reflective essays. These often include a lack of engagement with literature or an insufficient focus on planning for future improvements. While many are adept at describing situations and emotions, fewer effectively discuss what they’ve learned and how they’ll apply it in the future. The speaker hopes the 5R framework will help viewers write stronger reflective essays. They encourage viewers to like the video, subscribe, and stay tuned for more content.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Reflective Essay
💡5R Framework
💡Reporting
💡Responding
💡Relating
💡Reasoning
💡Reconstructing
💡Critical Analysis
💡Academic Reflection
💡Action Plan
Highlights
Introduction to writing reflective essays, explaining its importance in critically analyzing past events and experiences to deduce learning points.
The 5R framework for reflection is introduced, which is used to plan and write reflective essays effectively.
Explanation of the five key steps in the 5R framework: Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Reconstructing.
The 'Reporting' step focuses on setting the context of the experience, using past tense to describe what happened without interpretation or emotion.
In 'Responding,' the writer starts to bring in personal thoughts, feelings, and observations about the event, using personal language such as 'I thought' and 'I felt.'
The 'Relating' step requires the writer to connect the experience to prior knowledge, skills, or relevant literature, using comparative language like 'this reminds me of.'
'Reasoning' is emphasized as one of the most critical parts of the reflection, where the writer draws on theoretical literature to explain why events occurred as they did.
Critical thinking is key in the 'Reasoning' step, where students are expected to analyze situations through different perspectives, supported by relevant theory or literature.
The final step, 'Reconstructing,' focuses on developing an action plan for future experiences based on what was learned from the reflection.
Reflective essays should not only describe events but critically engage with what was learned and how it can be applied to future situations.
The 5R framework helps students move beyond basic event description to more meaningful, academic reflection using literature and critical analysis.
Common weaknesses in reflective essays include lack of connection to literature or theory and failure to propose actionable steps for future improvement.
Writers are encouraged to use academic language in their reflections, even though it seems personal, as essays are still evaluated based on academic standards.
Including theoretical support in the 'Reasoning' and 'Reconstructing' steps ensures a well-rounded, academically solid reflective essay.
The video wraps up by encouraging viewers to apply the 5R framework to improve their reflective writing and learn from their experiences.
Transcripts
hello hello and welcome back to my
channel
in today's video i'm in a slightly
different background as you can see
i have moved all we have here is the
same sofa as i had before
so from now on if you hear a bit of an
echo then i apologize there's not much
going on right now but slowly slowly
i'll be decorating
and making this place be more of a home
but today we're going to be talking
about writing a reflective
essay now this came into mind because i
received quite a few reflective essay
documents at the page doctor
particularly from students from like a
nursing background or a media
communications background and i found
that i was saying the same thing for
feedback now a reflective essay is
important because it means that you are
critically analyzing
a past event or past experience in order
to reflect upon it and
improve or deduce a learning point now
unlike other type of essays flexible
essay is quite unique in that you do
need to
understand how to write reflectively to
be able to actually write it because it
does form the core element of
a reflective essay and so today i'm
going to be talking about a principle
and a model that you can use to write
reflectively
and to write a strong reflective essay
and this framework is called the 5r
framework for reflection
it's actually a model that was deduced
and published in a few papers from a
researcher called bane and his team
i'll leave a few links for it down below
if you want to read it in a bit more
detail i'm going to be going through the
five different steps for how to reflect
and how to
plan a reflective essay and then how to
write it and how to write it effectively
enough that it is a strong reflective
essay so keep on watching if you want to
see this and
don't forget to subscribe to my channel
to see more from me i post every
wednesday and sunday and mostly that
watch me are not subscribed to my
channel so what are you waiting for i'll
give you a second go for it press
subscribe button so you can see more
from me and keep on watching to find out
how to write a reflective essay
now there are a couple of different
models that you can use to write a
reflective essay and there isn't really
a
fixed model that you should use however
i found that this one i'm going to be
talking about today helps you really
engage with your experience helps you
engage with the reflection
and helps you think a lot more
critically some of the top marks that
come from reflective essays are to do
with not just writing about the
particular situation itself but more
about how you built from that so how
are you engaging with the literature
that's appropriate to your experience
how are you engaging with your actual
experience and your feelings
and also how are you using that to be
able to improve next time and what have
you learned from that process and so
this model really forced you to think
about all of those different
aspects there are other models as well
and i'll leave links for them down below
in case you are interested in using a
slightly different method but this one
is the most wholesome and covers
everything that you really should be
writing about
in a reflective essay now the five
different points of this framework are
the following
reporting responding relating
reasoning and reconstructing now if i
just read off what each of these are
from the actual paper itself
it is reporting is supporting the
context of the experience
responding is you're responding to the
experience so you're kind of saying how
you felt about it at the time
then you're relating the experience to
current literature that could be
knowledge that you have skills that you
have but also other papers and other
sort of studies that are related to your
particular
situation and then reasoning so thinking
more about theoretical aspects of your
experience
this is where you're going into more
subject-specific language and then
lastly it is reconstructing your
practice by planning future actions for
a similar experience so this is where
you are
giving yourself recommendations for how
you do things better and you're
explaining what you've taken away from
this experience because the whole point
of reflecting is being able to reflect
and say right this happened this didn't
go that well or it did go well and this
is what i want to implement in the
future
to have a better experience so for the
first one reporting now reporting is
just setting the scene when you're
writing an effective essay before you
can just go into it and say
i didn't like this and i didn't like
this you first need to give context to
what the situation was
so what happened how did things happen
what was the situation
what was your place and what was your
kind of role in this particular context
you want to
briefly not in too much depth you don't
have to go into all the depth of the
situation but you want to briefly
reflect
on kind of describe what exactly
happened you're just reporting the
detail
in this section you're not giving any
interpretation you're not discussing
you're not really saying much of your
feelings either
it's purely just reporting this happened
that happened i was here
i was there it was literally just a
report of the situation and the event
and for this you want to use past tense
because it is an event that happened in
the past so you would say
i did this or i was involved in and also
who else was involved was it you was
there someone that you were shadowing
i've read
quite a few from like nursing students
and pas as well who have written sort of
reflections of midwifery too who've
written reflections on their experience
during their placements
and for the start you just want to set
the scene who were you with
where were you what was your like what
was the department just set the scene so
the reader's able to i guess be placed
in your particular event
before they then read on to find out
what exactly happened and then we're
moving on to the responding section
now here is where you're starting to
bring a bit more thoughts and feelings
into
the particular reflection so here is
where you're giving your standpoint
about what happened
and so you can use words such as i
thought i felt
like i believe words that kind of show
what your emotions were at the time
and this should encompass sort of your
thoughts your feelings any observations
that you might have had during that time
so you've set the context you said we
know what the situation is
then you put yourself in that place and
you're personalizing the experience now
and you're saying
what your thoughts were what your
feelings were and how it made you feel
and even just raising some potential
questions that you might want the reader
to think about
pertaining to how you were feeling at
the time and not necessarily kind of
interpreting it as of yet
and you also want to use some language
that connects feelings and
thoughts so for example subsequently
this happened then this happened
firstly this happened so you're joining
right this thing happened
and then this happened so you're kind of
making it into a nice little story where
you're putting yourself in the place as
the person that it's happening to
and then the third part is responding
now here you are responding to the
situation and trying to relate it to
any skills or experience that you might
have so some questions that you might
want to ask yourself is for example
where have i seen this before what can i
relate this to
what knowledge do i have in this
particular situation
and also what was similar or different
to what happened in this event
to what may have happened to you before
now for this some language that you can
use
is for example this reminds me of when
and the reason why you're using present
tense is because you're basing it off of
a past
event but you're reflecting right now so
you're basing it in the kind of current
tense so that should be present and also
you want to use
terms that are comparative as well so
things like similarly
this was similar to terms that showed
that there is similarity or differences
to events that may have happened to in
the past so this is all up to do with
being as critical as possible and
reflecting as much as possible on the
particular event that you are reflecting
upon
then fourthly and this is actually the
most i'm not saying the most important
but kind of the highly rated and where
the higher marks come from
is the reasoning part of reflection and
here you are
trying to make sense of what's happened
so usually you might want to use some
literature
do look at what your requirements ask
you about but for the most part
sometimes you look at literature or
theory
to make sense of the event and why
things panned out the way they did so
you want to think about any theoretical
literature that might help you
understand the situation a bit better
let's say you weren't a nurse
and you saw someone dispensing
or prescribing medicine in a certain way
and you were unsure but you asked and
you're pushed aside or something
you can use your framework because you
have that nursing framework that i read
about you could use that as literature
and saying
actually i should have been taught about
this or i should have been explained
step by step or what i'm just giving an
example if i said i'm not a nurse
but you can use literature and actual
skills and theory
to explain situations explain why things
should or shouldn't have happened the
way they did
also to be critical you want to think a
bit more about different perspectives so
how would
let's say you're a student how would a
qualified doctor or nurse or
pa or someone how would they react to
this is the way that you reacted
appropriate or could things have been
done differently and again try to use
literature to support your what you're
saying because it really shows that
you're not just reflecting on a personal
level but you're reflecting on an
academic level as well which is really
important especially for an academic
piece of writing i mean even though it's
reflective and it seems quite sort of
personal and a bit like a diary
it's still going to be marked
academically and using a structure so it
is important that you include
some literature here that can support
what you're stating and the last section
is reconstructing and this is a bit of i
guess future plans what i mentioned
earlier about how you want to build upon
your experience and figure out how you
would do things better here's where you
have to be really i guess honest with
yourself
and this is where the real reflection
like the real usefulness of the
reflection comes out of it there's no
point of reflecting without taking
away something from that experience so
what you want to do here is think about
how you can do things differently next
time and essentially you're developing
an action plan
for future instances such as this and
again you can use literature here so you
can either say
based on literature that you mentioned
in the previous sections
in the reasoning sections or you can
mention new literature so you can say
look according to this particular theory
or this particular piece of evidence
this is how i should
have responded or this is how things
should have panned out or how i should
have learned or whatever and
because it didn't i do want to implement
this in the future and
this is how i'm going to do it so you
can still use literature in this section
as well to support
your future plan and you want to think
about what the different options are so
you can say things like
i will or i might or i can words that
show that you are going to implement a
certain
action so try think about how you're
going to show that you have learned
something so you can even just use the
terms
i have learned that or it is significant
that or i
through this experience my big takeaway
has been
to show that you've reflected you've
understood how
things could have been done differently
and you're going to put together
this goal and this plan to do things
differently next time that is the key
takeaway point so it's really important
for you to consider
all five of these steps in order to
write a strong
reflection piece and one of what i
usually find missing is a bit about
literature so where you're including the
skills and wider sort of reasoning and
then i also find
missing future work your future plan a
lot of the time people are really good
at describing what happened that's
really easy they're really good at
describing
how they felt again that's quite simple
that's quite easy for us to do but it's
really hard for us to then take away
from that
something that we can implement into the
next instance so those are things i find
missing quite often
and hopefully this five-step framework
that i have disseminated to you
will help you writing a reflective essay
in the future if you did find this
useful then i would love it if you could
give me a thumbs up and don't forget to
subscribe to my channel if you want to
see more from me and i will see you guys
in the next one bye
you
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