Teaching Journals

How to write a journal

The following questions might help to guide the writing of a reflective journal,

• What was the event?
• How do I feel about it? (good and bad feelings)
• What could I have done differently?
• What will I do in a similar situation next time?
• What have I learnt?

You can use other frameworks of questions to write your journal, for example, you can simply ask:

• What worked well in this class? Why?
• What did not work well? Why?

'Why?' is, of course the critical element which leads to reflection.

In setting out the journal you could draw a line down the page and use one side for descriptions and observations of events and the other side of the page for comments and reflections.