A major aspect of writing a reflective essay is the use of your personal experiences and how this relates to the topic of your essay. If you're writing a reflective essay which states your disagreement with affirmative action, you can write that as a minority, you had relatives in your family who were successful in life before affirmative action laws were put in place. For example, you can mention that your grandfather operated a neighborhood washeteria that created jobs for people in your community for fifty years, and now you and your spouse are the owners of this washeteria.
When writing a reflective essay, it's important to immediately get the reader interested in what your topic will be about. If you're writing an essay which reflects on teenagers' over-dependence on technological devices to do assignments, you can start your essay with a statement such as "The other day my younger brother was asked to compose a long letter to his parents as an assignment for English composition, and when he turned the assignment in, the teacher noticed he had too many grammatical errors. My brother then said that he used his spell checker rather than use a regular dictionary. This is an example of a teen who relies too heavily on technological devices to complete assignments."
In your reflective essay, you should also examine other views on the subject you're discussing. If you're writing about the benefits of purchasing and cooking with organic ingredients, you should not only include the research which supports your view, but also information from those who disagree. For example, you may find articles from magazines which claim that while organic ingredients are healthy, for low-income families it can be too expensive to get organic ingredients, and non-organic fruits, vegetables and grains are just as nutritious.
The conclusion of the essay should be concise and be a summary of everything you discussed in the essay. If you explored the effectiveness of welfare reform in your essay and you mentioned both pros and cons of this initiative, you can state that while it's true that there are many citizens who abuse welfare and use it as an excuse not to be self-motivated and seek work, welfare also benefits citizens who lost their jobs but desire to rebuild their lives by getting training for future employment.