Thing 5: Reflective Practice

Back at the start of the CPD23 program and thing 1 I said that I was looking forward to thing 5 and here we are!

The view from my office window as I've 'reflected' on what to write here today.

I hoped I’d find this module beneficial as I’m working through the Chartership process and trying to write my evaluative statement! Those of you who have stumbled across my blog before may have read about my weekend of trying to pull the statement together and not doing very well! I feel like I’ve hit a massive brick wall lately and the latest draft of my statement is now with my mentor in preparation for our meeting next week.

Looking around some other Thing 5 blog posts I came across Rambling in book world and agree with what Margaret said there “We look at what we are learning, think about it, see what we have accomplished well, what we feel we could have done better and identify new strategies or information that we need to use for the next learning curve.”  In my head I do all of this and for my employment related PDR also (but in those I can waffle).  For the Chartership evaluative statement I have 1000 words and have to cram a ton of information in to something concise, informative and coherent – that’s where I’m struggling as I’m naturally a ‘waffler’ (as you may have noticed from reading this blog!) and I’ve noticed from my PDR etc that my reflective writing a bit all over the place at times.

I’ve been to one session on the evaluative statement writing and found that useful, but having read the thing 5 posting and looked around other blogs and useful websites I feel a little bit more enlightened now.  I found a few blogs and one of the presentations particularly useful and I’ve also reserved one of the suggested books.  I'll definitely be coming back to thing 5 over the course of CPD23 I feel.

I think following my meeting next week with my mentor I’m going to sit down and put some of what I’ve read over the past two days into practice!  I’ll let you know how it goes as I continue on my Chartership journey!