Hello trainees!
"Make sure you forget about work this half term!"
We have all heard this from our mentors and colleagues. I remember promising my mentors and colleagues that I would keep my laptop firmly closed over the half term holiday, knowing full well that I was going to be working most days, trying to put together my evidence folder.
Last term I shared with you the method I undertook when compiling my evidence folder, and the method I encourage my trainees to also embrace. Today, I'd like to share with you how I approached completing my reflective logs.
I tell my trainees that they are continuously reflecting, even when they may not realise it. But the truth is, putting that reflective practice onto paper can be extremely tricky and very daunting. Some people reflections as a critique of themselves, while others won't celebrate themselves even when they have absolutely smashed it. I recently carried out a CPD session with my trainees as many of them had voiced that while their training provider had instructed them to carry out lots of different reflections for their evidence folders, they really weren't sure how to do this successfully. They found the session useful, so I'm hoping that by sharing this with you all, you may be able to take something away from it too!
CPD or Training Day Reflections
As part of your teacher training, you'll be attending countless training days, training sessions and CPD session throughout the year; some useful, some not-so-useful. At the start of your training year, when you have a smaller timetable, I recommend completing reflections on as many of these sessions as possible, because you'll never know when you may need them. Toward the middle/end of your training year, as your timetable becomes full and your workload increases, your training days should lighten but your school will still expect regular CPD attendance. At this point, I recommend completing reflections on the sessions you find useful. By this point, you will have found your feet as a teacher and your teacher identity will be beginning to flourish, therefore you will know which training and CPD sessions are the ones that will impact your teaching practice.
When completing training day or CPD reflections, it is helpful to have a basic set of questions ready to help you organise your reflections onto paper. Many training providers have a proforma, but my from my own experience, not all proformas are helpful. The first thing I recommend is to have you notes from the session and your reflections all in one place. This small change saved my SO much time. At the start of my training, I was making notes on paper in my beautiful notebook, only to the go home and copy out any important notes onto my reflection document. After a whole term, I realised how time consuming this process really was. Instead, I began using my own proforma, that went like this:
1) A box to type my notes directly onto. This is for my use, and I could include anything I wanted in here.
2) A box with my three 'Golden Nuggets'. This is where I write down the three most important things I will take away from the training session.
3) A box with three questions in: From this training session, what is the first thing I will trial in my classroom? Why will I trial this? What impact do I expect it to have on myself and my students?
4) A final box with three more questions to be filled in at a later date: How did the trial go? What were the outcomes and are these what I anticipated? What would I do differently, if anything? What is the biggest thing I will take away from this?
As I produced the proforma myself, I found that I could alter the questions based on the content of the training or CPD. For example, if the training session is on safeguarding, it will be tough to 'trial' methods in the classroom. When you are faced with a training day or CPD session on things that can't be trialled, such as safeguarding, health and safety, understanding policy, or how to understand EHCPs/SEND information sheets, for example, remove all 'trial' based questions, and instead:
1) A box to type my notes directly onto. This is for my use, and I could include anything I wanted in here.
2) A box with my three 'Golden Nuggets'. This is where I write down the three most important things I will take away from the training session.
3) A box with three questions in: What will good practice look like in my classroom? How will I achieve this?
4) A final box with three more questions to be filled in at a later date: How have I used what I have learned in the training session? How did it help me and my students? What is the biggest thing I can take away from this?
The idea is, you are considering the most important things you have gained from each session, and you are giving yourself the opportunity to trial what you have been learning and consider the impact of this in your everyday practice. Do not feel that you have to try everything suggested to you by the professionals delivering the sessions! There is only one of you, you are still finding your feet in the teaching world, and you only have one year to collate your evidence - you can't do it all :)
That is why I recommend identifying those top three golden nuggets - these are your takeaways, and these are the ideas/methods/strategies that you have found most useful. Then, by narrowing these down to one final takeaway, you are setting yourself a reasonable target and allowing yourself to really zoom in on one key area when you are reflecting. Regarding your final evidence portfolio, your training provider will prefer to see depth of detail about a little in the way of reflective commentary, rather than pages of writing about every single thing that was shared with you in your CPD and training sessions!
Everyday practice reflections
Always, and I mean ALWAYS, have a pile of post-its on your desk! As well as the longer journeys that you reflect on, there are always small instance that can lead to good reflective commentary too: Have you ever been in the middle of teaching, and you suddenly think of something you should have done but didn't do? Or noticed a small detail that you want to celebrated? Or realised that something wasn't working, so you changed it? There are so many different reflective thoughts that take place during a lesson. These make perfect reflections, so make a note of them! Yes, you may be faced with a pile of annoying post-its floating around your desk by 3pm, but somewhere among that pile is a golden nugget that will give you a lot to write about, and will likely lead to a fantastic evidence bundle.
You can write reflective commentary on absolutely any thought process or decision that you have made, or process that you have undertaken:
- Changing a seating plan to improve behaviour
- Using the school's behaviour policy effectively
- Changing an upcoming lesson plan based on today's lesson outcomes
- Making a phone call home to a parent
- Using a new style of whole class reading aloud
- Improving independent learning
- Improving collaborative learning
- Effective use of homework
- Trialling different AFL strategies
- Taking part in after school revision or intervention sessions
- Sharing a lesson you have planned with other teachers
- Working with support staff or LSAs
The list is endless! The hardest part, though, is knowing WHAT to write in these everyday reflective logs. Don't go into these unarmed. Again, I recommend beginning these reflections with a bank of questions. I also had my own proforma for this as the one I received from my training provider was far too abstract and it meant my reflections begun as large pieces of waffle with very little structure. I soon learned that much like the training and CPD reflections, depth of detail about one area is much more effective than pages of writing about everything to do with the focus of the reflection!
So, I structured my proforma around the following:
1) A box introducing the focus of my reflection. Keep this brief! Just state the date, and a sentence or two about what you're writing about.
2) A box that zooms in on what the topic/focus looked like at the start, before you made any changes.
- What did it look like at the beginning?
- What am I hoping to achieve?
- Why am I hoping to achieve this?
3) A box that explains what you did.
- What did I do or put in place?
- What changes did I make?
- Why did I do this?
4) A box explaining the outcomes.
- What did I achieve?
- What have I learned?
- What is the impact on myself and my students?
- What was most successful?
- Is there anything I could do differently?
- What is my biggest takeaway?
I found that by following the above process, my reflective logs were well structured, had no waffle, and they allowed me to get the most out of the reflective process - to consider what I have done and why this is important for the students that I teach. While the above structure is applicable to the majority of scenarios, there may be some questions that need to be altered slightly or removed. Don't feel that you have to answer all of these! If it doesn't feel like it fits, then take it out :)
Your reflective logs are the key component to a good piece of evidence. It is where you show off the most important part of any evidence bundle: impact. Keep this at the heart of all of your reflective logs, whether they're the ones you complete for training and CPD sessions, or for everyday reflective commentary on your practice. Your reflections show how you are learning, how you are improving your teaching practice, and how you are developing yourself so that your students will make progress. Check out my previous teaching post, where I share my methods for producing strong evidence bundles!
Please feel free to contact me if you would like to see some examples of completed reflective logs, or if you would like my proforma :)
xx
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