The Friday Mindset - Issue #35

December 10, 2021

It's Friday!

Christmas cards are arriving in pigeon-holes. Quality-Street themed coffees abound. Cheap mince pies are consumed cold on bus duty and the staff member who gets lavish gifts from their classes is already arranging them in the staffroom for all to see and bashfully saying, "I know, aren't they just wonderful kids? They shouldn't have!"

(Later in the academic year, when you confess you're having trouble with your year 9s, this same staff member will look taken aback and tell you, "Really? Those guys are lovely! They're always really well behaved... for me." And you will leave their vicinity and find a broom-cupboard in which to weep.)

But all that comes later. For now, the winter holidays are nearly upon us and it's the last newsletter of the year! So let's dive in.

Something to try...

As you know, we've been obsessing about motivation recently. We hope it's been timely - January is such a good opportunity to give students a boost via a series of tools and tricks they can use to get themselves fired-up for a new year.

Yesterday we ran our twilight on motivation - many thanks to all of you who came along to listen - and we thought we'd finish this term with a giveaway of one of the activities we covered in the session.

It's very straightforward. It's based on the definition of motivation that got this whole phase started a few months ago; that motivation is the ability to initiate and sustain goal-oriented action.

What struck us is this: that we might think of 'motivation' as a single thing, but in fact, the sub-components/techniques might be very different depending upon whether we're initiating action or sustaining action.

If you fancy exploring it with students at KS4 or 5, here's a super-short and simple PowerPoint to use:

A short powerpoint with a new activity

Something we've been reading...

The image above really grabbed us! It's the work of Professor Kathryn Stanger-Hall at The University of Georgia. She's a plant biologist and her study explores approaches to test preparation in Biology classes but the implications are, we think, wide-reaching and super-interesting so bear with us!

The study is designed to find out if students prepare differently for multiple choice exams (MC in the study) versus critical response (CR in the study) and short-answer (SA in the study) exams. She teaches two groups of students - one group have just a multiple-choice exam at the end of the semester (the MC group) and the other have a mix of multiple-choice, short answer and critical response questions (the MC-SA group.)

She then uses this table to distinguish between study approaches; cognitively passive approaches and cognitively active approaches. This table in itself makes the paper worthwhile in our opinion.

Then she looks at exam results. What does she find? Well, the paper itself is a dense but rewarding read and you can check the full thing out if you've got a spare half-hour. But we've also tried to fillet the best bits for you in this word document, so take your pick of the two links below:

Kathryn Stanger-Hall, University of Georgia

Our latest offer...

Christmas presents from us to you! Two books to give away this week. It's the usual rules - if you're interested just say hello at [email protected] as quickly as you can, specify which book you want and we'll post it.

We got an email recently that wondered where these books come from, and asking if we have a magical source of reading material. The answer is no. We buy them and read the sections we want. Then we give them away. What's in it for us? Nothing but a trip to the post office really.

We have a copy of Dean Burnett's 'The Idiot Brain (A neuroscientist explains what your head is really up to)'

and David Epstein's 'Range (How generalists triumph in a specialized world)' to give away.

Two great books - email now if you want them!

And that's it for now, folks. This will be our last newsletter this year. See you bright and breezy in 2022, Happy Holidays!

Steve and Martin