Reflective writing

• Social Work
• Higher Education (degree)

Feedback from reflective assignment 1

Well done everyone!

Cover sheet for next entry

Remember to have a reference section at the end of your work and to use the Harvard Referencing system- http://guides.library.ulster.ac.uk/ld.php?content_id=28291696. Week 7 we will look at this in class.

Try to add some additional reading, outside of what is expected, this will earn you EASY additional points

All submitted assignments should have the file name: SWK104 Reflective Journal 

Careful with your use of the word "that"- this will save you words on your final submission- its the first place I go to, when I need to reduce my word count.

Mark clearly at the bottom of the essay the word count, bold and underlined.

Think about layout- make this easy for the reader, use paragraphs.

The final assignment will take the form of an individual written word-processed combined journal of not more than 2000 words, including title page, contents page, intext references and citations, but excluding a reference list. 

Week 1 canvas

An amazing moment
thoughts?

FEEDBACK

• Feedback from the group
• Pick one article (the one you feel as a group is the most useful for your peers to hear about) 
• Which Service User group is it related to?
• Summarise the key points and tell your peers why it is so useful.

Jennifer Moon has written extensively on reflective writing for many years (for example, 1999, 2004). She argues there are many benefits to reflective writing:

It forces us to give time to reflection.

It helps to slow down the thought process and so helps us to sift material.

It makes us organise and clarify thoughts as we seek to structure the writing.

It gives us control over the material we reflect on, as we choose what to include and what not to include.

It helps us to recognise whether we really understand something, since we have to try to explain it in words.

It records the moment – enabling us to step back and reflect further at a later stage.

I write reflectively...

1. Only when expected to for university
2. I like to write reflectively on a regular basis and for assessment
3. I am trying to do this more often
4. I would like to do this more often

Think about it, if we only did Social Work when we were being directly observed, it probably wouldn't be that good. So how come when we dont ever write reflectively do we think this will be ok?

Get into the habit of writing reflectively a couple of times per week.

Highlighter Pens Top Tip!

You can do this on your computer – generally I use actual highlighter pens as I don’t like reading too much on screen. 

Use your most recent reflective log to practise... Read through the writing and “highlight” all the sentences which are descriptive in yellow, then highlight reflection in pink, discussion of theory in blue and so on. 

A good piece of reflective writing will be multi-coloured. If you find there are “chunks” of colour, such as two yellow paragraphs followed by a pink paragraph, then it is likely that the themes are not well synthesised in the writing. 

This approach can be really useful for editing too – if you tend to go way over the word count, you can see more clearly where to edit the work (cutting down the yellow, for example).

Canvas

Dont forget to complete the reflective writing activity on canvas for next week

Next week-

Using Evidence - Quantitative Data- Why Numbers Matter in Everyday Life