The Friday Mindset - Issue #69

Hello all!

December is on the horizon. The site staff sweat and swear, wrestling fifteen feet of plastic and tinsel out of the cellar as the tree makes its first appearance of the year. Reception is full of wrapped charity boxes. Kids start asking if 'we're just watching a movie today.' Yeah, it's that time of year.

The time of year we always remember one of our sixth form students - let's call him James - who arranged the delivery of two-hundred vape-kits to school so he could sell them to his fellow students for profit.

Unfortunately for James, the van-guy who pulled up at the gates turned out to be a massive dude with prison tats and a vast beard who insisted the delivery form was 'to be signed by an adult', forcing James to call the sixth form office and ask for us.

I can still picture the lad's face as we met him in reception. You might imagine James was wearing an expression of trepidation; fear even. You've never been more wrong. He was entirely unaware he might be doing anything untoward and was pleased as punch with his entrepreneurial scheme.

We really ruined his Christmas when we sent the whole lot back. *sigh* happy memories.

Anyway, let's dive in, we've got some interesting stuff for you this week:

Something to try...

We've been looking again at an activity from The GCSE Mindset called Pre-Made Decisions. It was inspired by this article, in which journalist Lisa Earle MacLeod describes a colleague's approach to parenting.

If you're not familiar with the activity, it suggests the student imagines a series of scenarios that sabotage their work - a friend asks them to skip class; the internet's down just when they were planning on some research; they plan on revising but the sun's out - and the student makes and records a decision about what they'd do... but they do it in the cool-headed here-and-now. Then, when that future situation turns up, they're more likely to make the good decision they'd previously planned.

Re-reading that last paragraph, we've managed to make the process sound complex! It isn't. It's basically a premortem. (We cover premortems a lot in our staff training.)

Anyway - we've found a neat way to introduce the activity and made it into a short PowerPoint for you. It's got a good clip explaining the cobra effect too. Hope it's useful! Check it out:

A short powerpoint about making better study decisions

Something we've been reading...

Back in the day, we were really into The Do Lectures. We'd check in at the website every couple of weeks to see if there were new assembly ideas waiting to be exploited. Their publishing imprint is cool too. (We once pitched a book to them. It took hours to put together the pitch and fill out all the forms. We were so excited. What happened? Tumbleweeds, that's what.)

Then someone we were chatting to mentioned Do Lectures' cofounder David Hieatt had published a little e-Book. It's called 24 Quotes That Became a Compass for my Life.

It's short, personal, and vividly illustrated; we reckoned we could choose five or six great quotes and discard the rest easily. We began to wonder whether students could do the same. Then we thought - what if we asked students to compile their own? They could work in teams, pairs or individually to contribute (anonymously perhaps) to a tutor-group resource, or something to be shared lower down the school - a book we'd all created together.

There's potential here. See what you think:

An EBook by David Hieatt

Our latest offer...

A mop-up session for you this week: we're going to run a small after-school Zoom for those of you who missed our recent motivation session.

It will be a 45-minute session covering the theory and practice of motivating students and will include 5 unpublished VESPA activities for you to try. It’s quick, free and (hopefully) useful!

An introduction to the theory and practice of motivation

Thursday 1st December, 3:45-4:30pm

Meeting ID: 853 2926 8599

Passcode: 136073

And a reminder - if you have yet to meet Tony (our IT guru), here's your chance. He will be running sessions on the VESPA platform from 3-5 pm every Tuesday and Thursday until Christmas. Now is an ideal time to do the VESPA questionnaire with your students, so if you'd like to find out more please book a session using the link below:

That's all for this week. Have a wonderful weekend. Get some presents bought... and stay away from any contraband vapes, OK?

All the best to you and yours,

Steve and Martin

p.s.

Last call for our Building Towards Exam Success course; it features 15 VESPA activities - some old, most new - as a curriculum of sessions to build up to exams. It’s great for years 11, 12 and 13 in particular. It’s an online, two-and-a-half-hour session running on November 30th, and you can get all the details here.