REFLECTION

Reflection is pivotal to the learning in service learning.  It is the process that allows students to investigate the meaning and impact of their service experience.  Often students will not immediately see and understand the connection between their servcie experience and the ideas and learning goals in the curriculum and instruction.  Focused reflection activities provide an environment in which students begin to establish these connections between ideas, learning, and action. Below are several essential elements of high quality service-learning reflection activities.  Reflection activities:

• need to be clearly related to the student learning goals. are structured to take palce on a regular basis. take place before, during, and after service.be integrated into students' coursework
• takes place most successfully in an environment in which students feel psychologically and physically safe to express their views.

Topics for Reflection
There are many topics that could be addressed during a reflection activity. Choosing topics to address is an imporant and challenging aspect of service-learning. It is important to structure reflection activites so they enhance or demonstrate student learning relevant to the goals established for the project. Open-ended questions which allow students to focus reflection on topics of their choice can be quite helpful as a method of incorporating student voice into reflection activities.

Methods for Reflection
Class discussions, individual writing activities, and student presentations are three important methods for student reflection. However, they are often over used and suffer from misuse.  Establishing a balance between group and individual activities is crucial as it offers an opportunity for all students to participate in a way that feels safe to them.

Reflection activities are ideal opportunities to address student multiple intelligences.  As stated above, reflection can be done in a group or individually.  For example, creating a mural that incorporates learning and service experiences, writing an article for publication, creating a song, dance, dramatization, or musical composition that expresses a learning and service experience. Reflection activity products can be used to evaluate learning as they are a demonstration of learning.  One note of caution, these products can be highly personal and reflect dearly held personal opinions.  Teachers should be very clear about what they are looking for as a demonstration of learning.  This can be in the form of a rubric, expecially if it is an individual writing activity:  what is your writing prompt?, who is the audience?, what type of writing is it?It is a balancing act between personal expression and exploration of ideas and the necessity to demonstrate accomplishment of learning goals.  This is one reason to have multiple types of reflection activities throughout a service learning project.

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