Friday Mindset #144

Happy Friday…

Listen, this is our penultimate newsletter before the half term break. One more after this, folks - Feb 7th, that’ll be - and then we’ll rest our weary typing fingers for a fortnight, and be back on the 28th.

But have we let standards slip, replacing fascinating articles and useful resources with random and hastily-assembled tat? No! ‘Course not. Got some lovely stuff to share with you this week.

Let’s dive in.

Something to try...

One from Steve this issue. He’s been revving up his year 12s, introducing lots of ideas about evidence-based revision and encouraging the kids to try introducing these unfamiliar study techniques into their repertoires.

One of the metaphors he’s been playing with is the ‘periodisation’ of time that typifies the life of athletes; the off-season for rest and recovery, pre-season, mid-season and championships. He draws study parallels which are really interesting, and encourages different levels of preparation and effort in different periods. The Marathon Mindset powerpoint is available for you here:

But how to get them to engage with high-utility revision strategies in these mid-season periods?

This is where the frankly preposterous, and lots of fun, Evidence-Based Revision Bingo comes in. The attached document has a 5×5 grid of 25 revision techniques.

Then there’s a story - a very silly story, natch - to read out, that mentions 14 of the 25, and gives careful listeners the chance to shout ‘Bingo!’ You might need to slow down at times, give them a knowing glance to ensure they’re paying attention. But let’s face it, even if they don’t win whatever naff prize you organise, the session should encourage some discussion of effective revision strategies.

This version is Mancunian… you’ll need to adjust it so the ridiculous jokes suit your particular part of the world. OK, here’s the session pdf for you to download and play with.

Pretty-much instant assembly/tutorial right here, all thanks to Steve!

Something we're reading...

It seems recently - to us at least - that study after study has shown the power and impact of metacognitive interventions on student progress. (But there’s surely an element of confirmation bias, since we’re three folks who design and publish metacognitive interventions…)

Anyway, here’s another, this one a meta-analysis, so lots of references and data. Powerful stuff if you’re trying to lead change, persuade people to come on board, or advertise the need for metacognitive interventions. Look at the following extracts for example:

“Children who regularly plan and monitor their learning, and change their approach if necessary, are not only more likely to achieve more academically but they may also enjoy advantages in other domains of self-regulated learning.”

“Unsurprisingly… metacognition is a predictor of learning and success at school. Two recent meta-analyses found small but significant associations between elementary school children’s metacognitive processes and their academic performance, even after controlling for intelligence. Furthermore, another set of meta-analyses explored if interventions that focus on self-regulated learning, including metacognitive skills, enhanced young learners’ academic outcomes. These meta-analyses found that interventions that focused on enhancing metacognitive skills led to improvements in children’s academic skills.”

“…interventions incorporating metacognitive aspects, such as metacognitive knowledge, planning, and predicting were more effective in improving students’ performance than interventions lacking these strategies.”

“…self-regulated learning scaffolds improved academic performance [and] Donker et al. (2014) found the largest effect of metacognition interventions on writing.”

OK, so here’s the full paper. Well worth a deep-dive if you have staff or students to convince, or you’re running a CPD session, pitching an idea or just geeking-out with fellow teachers:

Our latest offer...

A reminder about our upcoming 45 minute Zoom call where we covered some work we’ve been doing on effective target setting. We’ve gone way past just ‘set SMART targets’, for this session, and gone through a load of examples of staff-set targets for students to identify what we think might be best practice. In summary:

We’re online at: 3:45pm on Thursday 27th of February

Covering: towards effective target setting for KS4 and 5 students

It’s going to be a Zoom session - and a reminder: it’s a repeat of the one we did back on December 4th. No need to come along if you’ve already heard it! Here’s the link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85294244530?pwd=UHr2wZk4GaOG0FNyTiqnuMz0DV8TY5.1

Meeting ID: 852 9424 4530 Passcode: 670707

Alright. We’re done for the day. Let’s get out of here.

All the best to you and yours,

Steve, Tony and Martin

p.s. the late Jim Rohn (1930-2009) was an inspirational speaker of the old-school. Now and again, we’ll find something in his work that bears re-reading and pondering. Here he is on failure being the result of repeated, compounding errors rather than the one-off lightning-strike of bad luck we often imagine:

Hidden track.