Journal Writing Experience

My experience so far with reflective writing in my journal has been a task in itself as I'm not normally one for writing down feelings or events what has happened, so it's all new for me. I felt like looking back now and reflecting on my first couple of journal entry's, I find my self rambling on and not actually fully reflecting on the events or planning for the future or if the problem I had arose again. 

To help with my reflective writing I decided to follow "Gibbs reflective cycle" on some entries I feel like this really helped me as it had the consent questions such as what happened? What were you feeling? What was good and bad about the experience? and so on...

This got me to think more in depth about the events what happened and how I actual felt about them and how I could react to it if it arose again. I found that even though it helped me reflect and evaluate my days better I still found myself rambling on.

Another method is using the Kolb's learning cycle. which is similar to Gibb's cycle just not as much in depth. This also links to how different people learn and where they enter the cycle for me I learn different depending what I am doing. 

If I am choreographing a dance I would be entering the cycle at experience as I do a lot of trail and error, by trying out ideas (active experimentation) and then reflecting on them. If it's anything to do with written work I have to work it out in my head first (abstract conceptualisation) and make notes using visual things such as spider diagrams or pictures.  So depending on the person will depend on where you will enter the cycle. 







I then tired another way to write my journal which is using graphs, charts and diagrams and even lists. This technique I found worked best for me, as I am a visual learner myself. I made a spider diagram about baby ballet. As I gets lots of questions asking how can you teach babies ballet and what even is baby ballet what are the benefits? As our age range is from 6 months to 6 years. So here's my attempt of reflecting and evaluating how baby ballet is helpful and its benefits for not just the child but me as a teacher and the child's parents/guardians.

I tried attempted on write a journal entry in another view. Another view being a student in my class, asking whether I enjoyed the class what I wished we did more of, which bits I wish we didn't do. I found this very strange to do as you never know what a student is thinking so I can only take a guess.

One method I found very difficult to write at first was what if? As you can never know what is going to happen in the future maybe it wasn't for me but after trying a couple more times I started to understand how to write about what could happen, what I would love to happen. For example I would love my students to go home and practise what we have done in lesson so that we don't have to go over it again. I would love one day so for someone who been working really hard at something for ages to be able to do I think one day such as the splits. I still feel though after a few attempts that's this isn't a method of writing I much prefer.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with journal writing, feel free to comment!