Friday Mindset #178

Happy Friday!

It’s our last issue before half term! We made it. Barely alive, and ready for a long lie-in. We’ll be taking our usual two weeks off writing this, then coming back on Friday February 27th.

Our training session (Effective Exam Intervention) is now full. If you missed last week’s announcement and you’re kicking yourself, we’re hoping to run the session again nearer to Easter, so keep an eye out.

OK, in the meantime, we’ve got some great stuff to share, so let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Clinical Psychologist Ross White works with organisations on building flexibility and resilience. This piece caught our eye recently, with its focus on purpose (and by extension, the vision element of VESPA.)

The commonly used idea of ‘seeking’ or ‘finding’ purpose is an unhelpful one, White argues. The replacement of ‘finding’ with ‘forming’ in the essay title was a useful one for us, as was the suggested activity, which White calls ‘a day on purpose’, during which clients design a day away from work, lived entirely deliberately and purposefully rather than accidentally.

Here it is:

Portal Talk...

A reminder this week about FL4SH — Tony’s revision app designed around the forgetting/retrieval loop, so revision becomes a habit rather than a panic.

What it helps with:

• All UK exam boards — AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas, CCEA and SQA. (Also International and Vocational Qualifications)

• Course-specific content — not generic “Biology”, but your GCSE or A-Level specification and topic structure

• Fast flashcard creation — so students actually make the cards (instead of planning to make them)

• Spaced repetition built in — the app nudges the right cards at the right time, before they fade

Want to have a sneak peek? Follow the link below…

Something to try...

A parent was telling us about the difficulty her teenage son has got himself into. Three A levels and an EPQ - which means loads of submissions all coming at once. He’s disorganised, demotivated, and faced with the prospect of three major hand-ins, none of which he’s got round to actually starting yet. He’s done the counting - and it’s 10,000 words in a month or he’s toast.

So we’ve put together a document for him, one that helps him stay on track, but also gives him tips for staying motivated.

And we thought we’d share it with subscribers, in case you’re dealing with a student who’s fallen behind and is facing an epic fight to stay in the game…

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