Reflecting isn't sitting back feeling vaguely good or bad about your work. It's a method with steps: you read the feedback, you sort it, you redraft, then you check the new version against the actual criteria. Done properly it's almost mechanical — which is exactly what makes it learnable.
The Three Buckets: Keep, Cut, Clarify
Most feedback, once you strip the tone off it, is telling you to do one of three things. Sort every comment into one bucket and you always know your next move:
- Keep — “this bit's working.” Don't touch it, and notice why it works so you can do it again.
- Cut — “this is dead weight”: a cliché, a repeat, a sentence that says nothing. Be ruthless; cutting is the fastest improvement there is.
- Clarify — “I didn't follow this”: the idea's fine, the expression is muddy. Rewrite for sharpness, not length.
The skill is reading past the wording to the action underneath. “This dragged a bit” is a cut. “Wait, who's talking here?” is a clarify. “Loved the opening” is a keep — and yes, that counts as feedback you act on, by protecting it.
Then Check Yourself Against the Criteria
Once you've redrafted, don't just feel finished — measure. Pull out the marking guide or the success criteria and go line by line: Does my piece actually do this? And this? Self-assessment turns a vague “I think it's better” into a specific “it's better here, and still weak there.” That honest read is what you carry into the next lap of the loop. Run the toy and practise the whole move: read, sort, apply, watch the line get sharper.