Student tips

Practice placements can be a difficult, worrying and an exciting time due to
competing demands on your time i.e. juggling academic study with practice
learning, testing your newfound knowledge and managing your personal
responsibilities such as family life. This can test your resilience and
organisational skills but preparation and planning is key, so to help you prepare
for placements a group of final year students from the London Borough of
Barking and Dagenham have come with a list of strategies you can use to
survive and make the most of your practice placement.

• Agree how and when you will take your reflective time with your
  Practice Educator at the early stage of placement use the placement
  learning agreement for this.
• Be proactive in seeking out learning opportunities for example, identify key services relevant to your team and discuss opportunities for shadowing practice.
• Be inquisitive ask for feedback from services users and colleagues.
• Try to finish your critical reflection 1 and the 1 st direct observation
  before the Christmas break.
• Use your Outlook to plan your time and block book your critical
  reflection.
• Use your midway as the benchmark to identify new areas of learning and development.
• Attend internal student forums, share ideas with your peers from other service areas form support networks. If you don’t have organised student forums within in your organisation form your own groups for reflective discussion.
• Use your team members and line managers as a source of knowledge and experience.
• Put yourself forward to undertake new tasks, STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE think about how these tasks link to the PCF and KSS.
• Use your organisations website to find policies, procedures and information about the borough.
• Make use of the available training and think about how this impacts on your direct with children and families and adults.