Category Archives: 3.4 Prof. Reflection & Commitment

My reflection on Feedback

Personally, I feel that feedback is very beneficial. Feedback is given to improve you as a person and ensure that you can do the job to the best of your ability. I am a dancer and a horse rider and both these sports involve a lot of feedback. You should not feel embarrassed by negative feedback as it is only being given to make you better. Both in horse riding and dancing, I have had private lessons during which I was given a lot of feedback and criticism to take on board. I have learnt not to be offended by it as my teacher only wants me to be the best that I can. Also in group lessons and classes, we learnt to give feedback to each other to ensure that we were all kept safe and that our group could come out on top and win competitions.

The benefits of feedback is that it helps you grow as a group. It makes you feel that you can rely on others and that they will help you when needed. It also helps you to improve your skills and allows you to identify where more work is needed. Also sometimes, having another person’s perspective changes your view on something and allows you to develop a deeper understanding of the topic. However, a disadvantage of peer feedback is that it could be used incorrectly. Sometimes, people respond harshly when they originally didn’t intend to which can led to disagreements and frustration.

I have found that receiving postive feedback makes me feel more confident in my work. Any negative feedback I receive makes me even more determined to work harder to ensure that I do not make the same mistake again. I feel that when you are given feedback, it encourages you to work harder due to the confidence boost and also because you want to prove to the person that you have taken their views on board and have improved.

When given feedback, I find it easy to give positive feedback but I find it more difficult to express the negative feedback. I have learnt that if you word it in a certain way it comes across better. For example – maybe next time, you should think more about…

Feedback is something which is used throughout life and as a teacher it is important to give feedback to pupils and fellow teachers. As a student teacher, I will be receiving a lot of feedback from lectures and teachers on my placement and I understand that not all of it is going to be positive but I know that it will make me even more determined to succeed and try harder.

 

Reflective Writing

Ever since I started Intermediate 2 English in S3, I have enjoyed doing reflective writing. I feel that it is a great way to reflect on past experiences and the affect they had on you. It allows you to evaluate how the experience has changed you as a person and how it helped other people. I feel that some people find reflective writing difficult because you have to evaluate yourself and it is your own personal thoughts. This makes everyone’s reflective writing completely different.

During 6th year, I did PDA in Youth work. Our final assessment was a reflective portfolio on activities that we conducted. Many people found the reflective part difficult while I was naturally able to write the essays. Through the reflective essays, I was able to see clearly what worked and what I would have done different.

Therefore, I feel that reflective writing is a vital part of the learning process. Through reflective writing, you are able to see what went well and how to improve. Nothing is ever perfect, so there is always things you can do to make the activity better.