The Friday Mindset - Issue #55

June 16, 2022

A Friday in June.

The drone of lawnmowers through a gauze of lazy birdsong. School kids eat ice-cream as they wend their way home through the shadows of street trees. Misdirected frisbees decapitate carefully manicured flower displays... etc etc, that's enough of all that, let's get started.

OK. Over the next few weeks - as you know - we’ll be looking at what makes a great summer term experience for students preparing to begin a new year; our pre-GCSE-ers in year 9, our 10s revving up for 11, our 12s getting ready for the year of UCAS and apprenticeship applications. We’re going to try and focus on the activities we can run, the ideas we need to spread, the cultural capital we can embed.

So wave the last bus off, put your feet up, and twist the cap off an ice-cold one. Let's go.

Something to try...

This week's activity is a classic. We - like you I'm sure - have been doing it, or a version of it, for years. It's an A-Z of University Courses; students go through a short powerpoint then either...

(i) choose a course they're geekily into and want to explore further - you need to make sure kids aren't all choosing the same course in this case - or...

(ii) get a randomly-assigned letter of the alphabet, which solves any issues of duplication.

Then they do some research and produce a single sheet of A4 paper so all the courses can be arranged on the wall. The powerpoint we're sharing has three really good hyperlinks taking you to possible university courses, so you might want to take 20 minutes exploring the links, projecting the findings as you go, before setting up the task itself.

Of course, year 12 spring to mind as a year group who need this session, but consider doing it with year 9 or 10 as well - it's a real eye-opener for them!

Enjoy...

A simple task to get students exploring university courses

Something we've been reading...

The paper we're diving into this week is focused on healthy-eating but stop, whoa there, don't let that put you off... it's really about habit-formation and it's very cogently written stuff.

It's the work of three academics at UCL who look at ways to encourage patients to make good choices - in this case about food, but in our case about study - more likely to (i) happen in the first place and (ii) become habit.

They reference Milkman's work (we've covered her earlier and recommended her book How to Change in a previous newsletter) about bundling habits together - associating a positive behaviour with an action or location. It's only three pages long so no shortened version necessary, just jump in:

It might work well alongside our activity from The A Level Mindset - The Three Rs of Habit.

Our latest offer(s)...

First, some bad news. A combination of factors mean we can't secure our usual venue for the London course on July 7th, and we can't find a suitable alternative that doesn't blow the budget. So we're going to have to cancel. We're so sorry to those who are already booked on - refunds are being initiated immediately. Please make sure you've requested a refund on any travel arrangements you might have made too. We're both really disappointed - but we can't find a solution. Profuse apologies.

More cancellation news: although their website isn't updated yet, the UKEdChat conference on June 25th is also cancelled and will we rescheduled for October 15th. Rail strikes have scuppered this one!

We still have two that are happening though, so a quick reminder:

There's the Network for Learning (Bath Spa University) session on June 28th. We’ve called it ‘Building Towards Exam Success: A fifteen-lesson curriculum’. Martin will be exploring a 15-session plan for taking year11s or 12s from day one of the next academic year all the way through to their exams. Details are here:

Building Towards Exam Success - A fifteen-lesson curriculum for encouraging motivation, organisation and effective revision... , Powered By Finetune CMS

And there's the Keynote 6th Form Leaders conference on Friday June 24th. Details here:

Keynote Educational offer A-Level & GCSE support for teachers and students - Teacher courses | Student Courses | Webinars | Conferences | CPD Courses

Ok, that's it for this week folks. Get out to the park on your BMX and pull some wheelies in the sunshine. Watch out for those frisbees though. Wishing you a happy weekend.

Steve and Martin