Remember your career entry profile (CEP)? That booklet you filled in at the end of your course, perhaps in a bit of a rush? If you and your induction tutor are not quite sure what to do with it, you’re not alone. Research carried out by London University’s Institute of Education for the Department for Education and Skills found the CEP was the least successful component of induction: it was not working as intended, and it was trying to do too much.

The CEP should be a slim document that gives a picture of you at the end of training, and can be used to target and record development over your induction year. The institute team concluded that these two elements are best separated using a professional development portfolio, such as the one I’ve designed for Lambeth and Jersey (see box). Teachers can use this not only during induction, but throughout their careers.

It’s a place to keep a record of your career history, including the CEP, which reflects progress at the end of your initial teacher training course, objectives and action plans for your development (kept in a separate section to the CEP), a record of all professional development activities, and all feedback and assessment of your teaching. By collecting everything in one place, the portfolio will smooth your induction and ease the process of continuing professional development, applications for jobs, threshold and advanced skills teacher status, and performance management.

You should be setting objectives for areas you want to improve - and to get you where you want to go. Your main concern is to be a good class teacher and meet the induction standards. But you may have a further ambition. Setting yourself a goal, a target or an objective (don’t get bogged down in the semantics) will give you a framework for doing a complex job fast. Objectives encourage you to prioritise, and meeting them gives you a sense of achievement.

Don’t stick slavishly to what you wrote in your CEP. Chances are that your new job makes much of it irrelevant. You might have been good at managing behaviour on teaching practice, but now have the class from hell.

Think about what’s really going to help you now, and what will make you a better teacher. Your induction tutor will help you prioritise and pace yourself. It’s good to set one objective based on an observation of your teaching, always remembering that your aims are to meet the induction standards and help your pupils learn.

Some newly qualified teachers have plenty of discussions about what they need to improve, but never crystallise specific objectives. This is a missed opportunity. The very act of writing down objectives clarifies them, and helps ensure they conform to so-called “Smart” criteria. (Is the objective specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound?) An objective such as “improve control” is too wide-ranging, and could be a lifetime’s work. Be specific about what needs most urgent attention, such as: “By the end of term, improve control, particularly after breaktimes, during independent activities and when tidying up.” This is achievable and relevant to your class teaching.

Aim to meet an objective within a half-term, to give you a sense of achievement. That’s how often reviews with your induction tutor take place. Fairly short-term goals will encourage you to be realistic, and stay focused.

When you’re happy with the objective, break it down into bite-sized chunks - steps or success criteria - and think about what you’ll have to do, and what help you’ll need.

Sara Bubb runs courses for NQTs and induction tutors at the Institute of Education, Lewisham, Lambeth, Greenwich and Jersey. Her latest book, Improving Induction: research based best practice for schools, is published by RoutledgeFalmer pound;19.99

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The professional development portfolio should document

* Career history, including CV and qualifications; job description; career entry profile - with information about initial training, strengths and areas for development at end of training.

* Objectives, including personal aims; action plans; reviews of progress.

* Professional development, including a plan and record of all professional development activities.

* Evidence of growing effectiveness, including all observations and monitoring of teaching; the three termly assessment reports for induction.