The Friday Mindset - Issue #36

January 07, 2022

It's the first Friday of the new year!

Finish that last email of the week, wave off that colleague and pull up a chair. Despite all the chaos it's good to be back and we've got some exciting stuff to share this week.

So without further ado, let's get started.

Something to try...

January is the classic time for re-exploring vision. Assemblies about new year's resolutions, personal 30-day challenges, all the good stuff that communicates culture, expectation and direction.

If you're interested in exploring 30 day challenges further with students, try using Matt Cutts' presentation. It's short, it's simple and it gets students talking. It works particularly well, we've found, if you already have your own personal 30-day challenge lined up, and you share it with students before asking them to join you and choose one of their own.

We've promoted the idea of study-based challenges on the whole, but occasionally allowed challenges outside of study if we think they'll build the habit of discipline and engage harder-to-reach kids.

If you want something a little more in-depth about goal-setting, we've clipped a section from a Campbell Walker video for you. In it he discusses:

  • how to ascertain what it is that excites you - what goals you might want to achieve, where your interests lie

  • how to set goals that are achievable

  • how to express that goal in writing

...and we think he does it really well. Hope you find this useful! Check out the link here:

Something we've been reading...

We caught a discussion on Broadcasting House last Sunday about staying positive and resilient at the start of a new year. There were various contributions and speakers, but one that jumped out was a speaker from UCL who's part of a group called the Uncertainty Experts.

We were intrigued and followed it up, checking out their website. Turns out this is a project run by Sam Conniff, who's book Be More Pirate we love, and have recommended in this newsletter in the past.

This is not an endorsement - we're only beginning to explore it and haven't formed a concrete opinion about the project yet - but at first glance it looks fascinating. We've been reading through the material and are contemplating joining their online sessions in the spring. Might be a good one.... check out the link below for a browse.

You see how uncertainty fuels anxiety every day, but there’s a better

option. Take part in this documentary designed to strengthen your

uncertainty toolkit.

Our latest offer...

Just before Christmas, we ran a free crash-course in Motivating Students. It's part research-based, and part practical, including five new activities. It seemed to go well. (Many thanks for the positive feedback!) We've since had emails asking if the session was recorded because people missed it. So we're going to run it again, on Wednesday 19th January from 3:45 - 4:30pm.

If you're interested, give us an email at the usual address, and we'll send you a Zoom link!

And we've another course coming up - a Network for Learning session entitled The Exam Mindset on January 20th, running from 4:00-6:30pm. Martin will be going through lots of techniques to boost student revision, and there'll be 15 activities shared (many of them new!) To come along, or recommend the course to a colleague, check out the details here:

The Exam Mindset – Preparing Students for Effective Revision ... , Powered By Finetune CMS

And that's it for this week. Happy new year everyone, all the best for the term ahead - and we'll see you next week,

Steve and Martin