Coundon Court — A CPD journal built around reading, reflection and feedback conversations

The brief

Coundon Court wanted a CPD journal that would sit on a teacher's desk through the year and carry three things at once: open thinking space, a structured way to capture what they read, and a place to record the feedback conversations that drive development forwards. The school was clear that the journal shouldn't impose a heavy framework — teachers needed room to write freely between the prompts — but it did need consistent templates so that, by the end of the year, a teacher could flip back through and see a coherent record rather than a stack of disconnected notes. The cover needed to feel distinctly Coundon Court: the school crest, dated 1891, anchoring a confident, contemporary design.

What we designed

Working with Coundon Court, we built a slim CPD journal with a strong front-of-book identity and three repeating reflection templates threaded through open Notes pages.

A bold geometric cover in the school's palette — pinks, greens, oranges, mustard yellow, lavender and deep navy — built from repeating shapes (arches, triangles, circles, stripes, pinwheels), with the Coundon Court lion crest (1891) set on a white block alongside the "CPD JOURNAL" wordmark and a blank name plate for the teacher to fill in.
Generous Notes pages at the front and threaded through the book, giving teachers space for free writing between the structured prompts — meeting notes, ideas in progress, observations from lessons, lines from a book worth returning to.
A Reading reflection spread: Book/Article, Quick Summary, Notes, Review — a single template that turns whatever a teacher is reading (an edubook, a research paper, a blog) into a recorded entry rather than a one-time scan.
An Actions spread that sits naturally alongside the Reading reflection: What is relevant that you would try? Is there anything you need to refine before you try? Impact. The Impact field is deliberately separated so teachers return to the entry weeks later and record what actually changed in their classroom, not just what they intended.
A Feedback discussion spread repeated through the journal: Discussion survey, Personal takeaways, Intentions moving forwards — designed to be filled in after a coaching conversation, observation debrief, or line-management catch-up so that the most important part of any feedback — what the teacher takes from it and does next — is captured in the teacher's own words.

The finished booK

A clean, working-document CPD journal for Coundon Court — distinctively branded on the outside, deliberately quiet on the inside — giving every teacher the same three reflection structures and plenty of open page to write into across the year.