The Friyay Mindset - Issue #11

March 26, 2021

For some of us, the Easter holidays are here. If that's you - enjoy the wellest of well-deserved breaks. We've got another week to go so we'll be the one's laughing in two weeks' time when you're heading back!

It's been a superb week for us, mostly because as speakers, we got access to the World Education Summit feed between Monday and Thursday. We've managed to sneak sessions in here and there, in between teaching and training. There have been some thought-provoking and inspirational highlights and some amazing speakers from around the world. We'll share what we can in bits over the next few weeks.

Here’s something to try…

We were at the summit doing a session on proactivity. It's a topic we've become particularly interested in as we watch students' varying responses to the challenges of WFH. Some seem to have adjusted quickly, even thrived in difficult circumstances; others have found themselves adrift.

One of the elements of proactivity we discussed at the summit was the tendency of successful students to set themselves work - sometimes to such an extent that 'homework' becomes an irritating distraction from the bigger picture. Speaking to the most proactive students we know, we've begun to see patterns in the kind of work they set themselves; patterns we've summarised under three headings - work that consolidates, work that extends and work that explores.

Consolidation, extension, exploration. It's a simple way of seeing proactively set work, but one we've found compelling; so much so that we've adjusted an activity from The GCSE Mindset, Four Steps Forward, to incorporate this new three-part distinction, picking out the choices in three colours so that students can pick proactive jobs from the appropriate categories.

You can access a few simple ppt slides below.

A couple of slides from our presentation.

Something we've been reading...

We've got to thank Niall Statham (@NiallStatham), at Hartland International School in Dubai, for sending this study our way. I think we've lost count of the number of times that we've mentioned the impact of mobile phones on productivity. This study argues that the mere presence of a mobile phone may be distracting and have negative implications for attention and task performance. A fascinating paper to discuss with students.

Implications for Attention and Task Performance

Our latest offer…

We’ve had a lot of interest in our new platform vespa.academy so last week we ran a free session exploring it - and really enjoyed saying hello to the folks who attended. We keep the sessions really small so people can ask questions and share observations. And we're going to do another next week in case you missed it! Reminder: it's a FREE session to demonstrate what the new platform can do and show you can use the MyVESPA course to help raise the performance and well-being of your students.

Eventbrite - Steve Oakes & Martin Griffin presents The VESPA Platform - Wednesday, 31 March 2021 - Find event and ticket information.

And that’s it for this week! Take care, stay safe, rest up and eat chocolate.

Steve and Martin