What to expect from CBM: Fourth year

Written by Lucy Williams Fifth year medical Student

Reflecting on your SSM Teaching Project Hi, I’m Lucy, one of the final year medical students.

This aim of this blog post is to help you feel more confident about writing your teaching project reflective essay. Reflective writing is an academic skill which goes above and beyond simply listing your experiences. You have all had some experience of reflective writing – remember all those years ago when you were writing about what you learnt from your work experience for your personal statement?

To achieve the highest marks in this teaching project essay, you need to fulfil four criteria set out in the ‘Assessment Criteria’ document on Canvas. To help you do this, I will go through each of the points in turn and give you some advice on how to achieve them. Clear and concise analysis of your own and others’ teaching, referencing the literature throughout – The keyword here is analysis. To analyse something is to try and make sense of it by asking why things have gone a certain way. For example, if you feel that parts of your session went well, ask yourself why they went well. Was it due to good preparation? Or maybe it was because you were the last to deliver your teaching session, so you had the advantage of observing your peers and gaining some ideas on how to teach. On the other hand, if things didn’t go so well, then again explore why that was. In terms of referencing the literature, what the medical school want to see here is that you are using theories or studies to support and develop your understanding of why things did or did not go well. You might believe, for example, using a variety of teaching modalities like lecture slides and YouTube videos contributed to the success of your teaching session. If this is the case, then find a study showing how varied teaching methods contribute to a successful teaching session. This will show your GP tutor that you are connecting the theory with your thoughts on the session thus demonstrating that higher level of reflection needed for top marks. Demonstrate insight into your own and others’ teaching; explain why lessons unfolded as they did – This really ties in to point 1. Remember to talk about your peers’ teaching projects as well as your own. Identify what worked well, not so well and suggest appropriate changes for future teaching sessions – You will all have had aspects of your project that you thought went well and not so well. The most important question to ask yourself here is if you were to teach your session again, what would you do differently and why. What you would change obviously depends on the nature of your project. For instance, if your session focused on osteoarthritis but you felt that it was too specific in terms of secondary care management, then an appropriate change would be to have more focus on primary care assessment and management of that condition. Use specific examples from your own and others’ teaching to support all points – This is fairly self-explanatory. If, for example, you thought a peer’s use of lecture slides to convey a specific point was useful, then say this. Avoid just stating that you found the use of lecture slides useful. The best way to achieve all of the above and give structure to your essay is to use a reflective model, with the most commonly used being Gibbs’ reflective cycle. I recommend you do some reading into this cycle and use it to help guide your essay. By following the above points, you should hopefully be able to smash the reflective essay and feel more confident in writing reflectively in future assignments. Best of luck and stay safe Lucy