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reflection activities and questions.

When facilitating reflection, vary the activities to accommodate multiple learning styles; create a reflective classroom—do not just add a reflective component.

Group Discussions

The groups may involve either the entire class or just a small number of students. If they are small groups, the instructor may allow students to choose their own group members, set criteria for group composition (e.g., no groups composed of a single ethnicity or gender), or assign students to groups. The group members exchange ideas about the course topics and/or the service experiences. The instructor may either pose a general or narrowly focused questions for discussion. A scribe may be assigned to submit a summary of the discussion to the instructor.

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Journals

Students may be asked to keep a journal as they engage in the service experience. The journals should not merely be simple inventories of events. They should address situations objectively, subjectively and analytically. Instructors may provide questions to guide students in addressing issues and should review the journals periodically. It is helpful to offer written comments, questions and feedback that will encourage, challenge and essentially provide a dialogue that deepends the students' thought process.

Journaling is also a way to use Bloom's Taxonomy to challenge students to use higher order thinking skills. The Levels of Bloom's Taxonomy are included below.


Knowledge This thinking skill tells you that a student can recall or recognize information, concepts, and ideas in the approximate form in which they exist.
Comprehension This thinking skill tells you that a student can grasp and interpret prior learning.
Application This thinking skill tells you that a student can transfer selected information to a life problem or a new task with a minimum of direction.
Analysis This thinking skill tells you that a student can examine, take apart, classify, predict and draw conclusions.
Synthesis This thinking skill tells you that a student can originate, combine, and integrate parts of knowledge into a product, plan or proposal that is new.
Evaluation This thinking skill tells you that a student can appraise, assess or criticize on the basis of specific standards and criteria.

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Types of Reflective Journals
Personal Journal
Students free-write journal entries each week about any aspect of the serivce-learning experience.
Dialogue Journal
Dialogue journals are a conversation the student conducts on paper about a particular question or topic. Exchanging journals with a journal partner can do this.
Highlighted Journal
Before a student submits his/her journal, he/she rereads entries and, using a highlighter, marks sections of the journal that directly relate to concepts discussed in the text or in class.
Key Phrase Journal
In this type of journal, students are asked to integrate terms and key-phrases within their journal entries. Journal entries are written within the framework of the course content and become an observation of how course content is evident in the service experience.
Double-entry Journal
When using a double-entry journal, students are asked to write two one-page entries a week: students describe their personal thoughts and reactions to the service experience on the left page of the journal and write about key issues from class discussion or readings on the right page of the journal. Students then draw arrows indicating relationships between their personal experience and course content.
Critical Incident Journal
This type of journal entry focuses the student on analysis of a particular event that occurred during the week. By answering one of a set of prompts, students are asked to consider their thoughts and reactions and articulate the action they plan to take in the future.
Three-part Journal
Students are asked to divide each page of their journal into thirds, and write weekly entries. In the top section, students describe some aspect of the service experience. In the middle of the page, they are asked to analyze how the course content relates to this experience. In the bottom section, students are prompted to comment how the experience and course content can be applied to their personal or professional life.

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Reading Responses

Students may be asked to write responses to course readings. Students can be allowed varying amounts of freedom in how they respond by posing either general or more focused questions.

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Electronic Forum

Students may be asked to contribute to an electronic discussion on service-learning and course topics using email or a listserv. They may respond to either questions posed by the instructor or to points raised by other students. (MyUNO (Blackboard) is an ideal way to structure this type of discussion.)

Analytic papers, portfolios and presentations are other options for service-learning practitioners to elicit critical reflection from their students. Please refer to the Final Projects and Asessment page.

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Examples of Reflective Questions
  • What will/have you been doing? Who have you been serving?
  • So what will/have you been learning? Why is your service work needed?
  • Now what should others do about it? What are you going to do about it?
  • Can you talk more about that? Why do you think that happens?
  • What evidence do you have about that? What does this remind you of?
  • Do you see a connection between this and _______?
  • How else could you approach that? What do you want to happen?
  • How could you do that?

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The information contained on these pages is a compilation of sources.

Hatcher, Julie A. and Robert G. Bringle, "Reflection Activities for the College Classroom" Indianapolis, IN: 1996

Manning, Kimberley "Service Learning in Political Science" 1998 Autumn Report. Eyler, Janet, Dwight E. Giles, Jr. and Angela Schmiede, A Practicioner's Guide to Reflection in Service Learning Vanderbilt U: TN 1996