Academic Research Booklet

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Reflection Reflecting on your work and progress is a key element of many of your courses and is a very good life skill to have – and one you will very likely need for future careers. In Sixth Form at Teddies in the EE (IB) you will write three formal reflections at specific point in the process, in the EPQ (A-level) you will write a project log which needs to be reflective. In both cases these different types of reflection will impact your marks.

When reflecting on your work and progress you should aim to do the following:

Make every sentence specific and meaningful. Simply saying you enjoyed or disliked something is not enough: you must evaluate your experiences.

Evaluating your experiences means assessing the value of what you've learnt and being self-critical. It is not enough to simply describe your experiences, you must demonstrate you've learnt skills and made deliberate choices. You might also consider how doing this piece of work has helped/ will help you in other subjects or at university for example. BE POSITIVE. Even if you had a stressful or negative experience, use it to demonstrate how it made you think, grow or develop in some way. To the examiner moaning - however valid you feel it is - will only come across as an inability to reflect and adapt. DO NOT state your title or your exact topic choices - remember, the examiner/ teacher has seen your work and already knows what you wrote about.

DO NOT describe a blow-by-blow account of your progress, instead you need to evaluate specific actions you have taken.