Writing a Reflective Journal

The purpose of your reflective journal is to record your thoughts and feelings about what
you are learning about while you prepare to go to China and while you are there. It
should also be used to record your learning progress – what you have learned and how
you learnt it.

You should aim to write at least 2 paragraphs for each entry. Here are some tips on what
to write about:

• How you’re feeling about the trip this week

• What questions you have about going to China
• What questions you have about your project
• What you need to keep working on in regards to your project
• Your own strengths and weaknesses in regards to the challenge ahead of you
• How your group is working together
• improvements that could be made and how
• More ideas that you’ve got for your project
• How your ideas are changing or not and for what reasons
• Frustrations and successes
• Other situations in which you might use this new knowledge or skill
• Another way you might have done something

You don’t need to include all of these points in each entry, but make sure you are
covering them all at some point.

Feel free to include all sorts of other things in your journals as well – sketches for
different parts of your project, dot points that you want to talk to your group about next
time you meet up, any questions you have. You might want to add in printouts of work
you have done so far so you have them to compare at the end of the project when you
come to write your final reflection.

Your journal IS NOT to be used to write notes to other people and you must be aware
that I, and other staff members, will read it at some point.