Reflection Suggestions
After an activity or game or at the end of a campout, a group reflection is a good way to review what was done and how things went.
A reflection should take no more than 5 minutes after a game or 10-15 minutes at the end of a campout or event.
Before the reflection begins, some groundrules are required:
- One person is the leader - usually the Senior Patrol Leader
- All participants sit in a circle at the same level - no one is over the others, all are peers.
- No interruptions, making fun of someone, or other disrespectful behavior is allowed.
- You can be silent if you wish.
As the leader, some suggestions for facilitating the discussion:
- Do not talk about your own experiences - let others express themselves.
- Do not judge what others share - that will shut down the sharing.
- Make positive comments and give positive encouragement to those that share.
- Allow random participation rather than going around the circle.
- Prompt the discussion with thought-provoking, open-ended questions such as these or others specific for the activity:
- What was the purpose of the activity?
- In what ways did things go as you expected? Or, what surprises occurred?
- How was the leadership distributed?
- How were decisions made?
- What was good about the way decisions were made?
- How could the decision making be improved?
- Who had specific skills that were useful in this task?
- Were all ideas considered and evaluated?
- How many ideas were tried before success was achieved?
- Was there one particular thing that happened so you succeeded?
- What did you like about this activity?
- What did you learn?
- What was difficult about this?
- Were you tempted to cheat and did you give in to that temptation?
- What was required to solve the challenge?
- How did this activity promote teamwork?
- Did you do your best in this activity or did you give up?
- After discussion, generalize the experience to other Scouting situations:
- How can you use this experience to improve your patrol?
- Did you discover skills that need additional work?
- Set goals for the group:
- What should we work on to improve as a group?
- Are there skills from this activity that you will work on?
- Would we benefit from doing this activity again?
