Friday Mindset #72

Happy Friday folks, and happy 2023.

We're looking all shiny and new for this issue and, you might have noticed, are now powered by a new platform after Revue felt the sharp edge of Musk's cost-cutting axe. But nothing much should change! Looking ahead, Tony - our online platform and psychometric guru - will have a slot called 'Portal Talk'; this might be a weekly thing or might be more occasional, depending on what's happening with online resources etc. Other than that, the rest of the weekly newsletter stays the same.

Except for bad jokes. We've taken a resolution to remove them all.

One more thing - in order to get this newsletter working, we've had to merge our email lists. If you're wondering why you're reading a newsletter you don't remember subscribing to... that's why. Please unsubscribe immediately if we're clogging up an already busy inbox! On the other hand, you never know there might be something useful...

Something to try...

It’s the start of a new month - sort of! Time for the last of our monthly challenges. A reminder to those who’ve missed earlier newsletters - each month of the academic year from September through to January we’ve been choosing a theme and an accompanying challenge that we plan will become a focus for tutorials and discussions during the course of the month. September’s theme was The Environment Design Challenge, October’s was The 500 Minutes Challenge, November’s was Planning Beats Procrastination Challenge. December was the Teaching as Learning Challenge.

This month is our Passion Trial Challenge, inspired by Australian writer and artist Campbell Walker. In it, he explores the importance of vision and effective goal setting - about ignoring the oft-quoted advice to "follow your passion" and instead have much more strategic, practical and concrete ways of figuring out what you want from life. There's a lot here, and it's all in the videos. Download it and check it out - if the clips don't work for you (it's happened in the past but our new landlords might have a better system) just email and we'll send them through.

Enjoy!

Something we're reading...

A quick and simple read for the new year! This will take you a couple of days at most and we've really enjoyed it. Austin Kleon has been on our radar for a few years now. Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work we're both wonderful, but something about last year's Keep Going struck a deep chord.

It's a book about being creative in tough times - but there are so many parallels with study, it can be read on these two levels throughout. It's heavily illustrated, informal and breezy, funny but so, so wise.

Portal Talk...

Welcome to my brand new section!

Steve and Martin have finally released me from the small dark room I inhabit, dealing with your student uploads and resource purchasing queries, and allowed me my very own subheading. Here goes....

For those of you not already subscribed to the Portal, here is some shameless marketing to begin. Click on the image below to watch our new promotional video.

Today's topic is Intervention Groups, specifically how to use the Advanced Search Field to create groups of students who are having difficulties in similar areas. We have found that simply by having the opportunity to talk to other students in the same boat they are more open about their route to improvement. Any VESPA or other intervention activities have a much greater impact. One of our partner schools - International School Como, Italy - is taking this approach even further with their Yr12 students. They have grouped the highest scoring students in each VESPA area to plan and deliver their own intervention sessions to the rest of their peers. So far they have only used the student results and the portal to select the groups.... We will return in a few weeks to find out how they got on in a guest feature.

If you would like to learn how to use the Advanced Search Feature on the VESPA portal to create targeted intervention groups, please watch my short video below. And if you would like to find out more about the VESPA portal please use my link below:

Creating VESPA Intervention Gps - Watch Video:

Our latest offer...

A book giveaway to start 2023. We've got a copy of Jim Collins' How The Mighty Fall to give away. It's a fascinating study of why organisations fail. Anyone interested in culture and leadership will find this absorbing stuff - it's packed with case studies of why previously successful companies hit the rails. Lots to learn if you're leading your own team, department, key stage or school/college.

It's our own old copy so it's a little rough round the edges but it's yours if you want it - just email [email protected] as soon as you've read this - if it's around 3:30 - 3:45pm on Friday 13th, you might find yourself the lucky winner!

That's it for now. The week is officially done. Tidy your desk, pack your bag, take a deep breath, and head into the weekend with a song in your heart.

All the best to you and yours,

Martin, Steve and Tony

P.S.

We can now do polls and we're childishly excited! Please engage with the highly informative poll below, so we can see how these things work.