The Friyay Mindset - Issue #25

September 24, 2021

Hello all. It's Friday! Purchase yourself your last vending-machine latte of the week, dig out that Tunnocks Caramel Wafer you've been saving, and pull up a chair. The students have vanished in a cloud of dust and diesel and it's time to take a moment before hitting the road home.

Here’s something to try…

Over the summer we’ve become obsessive collectors of the study habits and behaviours we’ve seen strongly associated with those who thrive in difficult times. What we thought we’d do is make them available here for further discussion and exploration. We’re referring to them as the #100behaviours, and we’ll be sharing them here, 20 at a time.

This week, twenty high practice behaviours.

We suspect many of you will have been waiting for these! We're all dealing with year groups who haven't prepared for exams or tests in the usual way; one in particular, the current 13s, took no exams at all and the current 12s quickly became used to short-term testing. Neither will be ready for (albeit adjusted) high-stakes exams in Summer 2022. Our 11s and 13s in particular will need a crash course in revision. (More about this below...)

So we think the 20 practice behaviours here will be crucial. You know the drill by now;

  • Students could use them to complete a simple never-sometimes-always analysis

  • Students could arrange them into three groups ‘comfort’ (I already do this) ‘stretch’ (This is unfamiliar but I could give it a try’,) and ‘daunted’ (I’m uneasy/challenged by the thought of doing this)

  • Coaching conversations could revolve around a discussion of them

  • Students or staff could pick which ones they think are most important

  • They could be modified and shared with parents.

Here’s something we’ve been reading…

We've referred to this paper in our training sessions before; Kelli Taylor and Doug Rohrer's study of revision for Maths tests. It's only a small study, but it looks at interleaving versus blocked practice and the findings are fascinating; certainly applicable outside of the subject area.

In particular two observations struck us: (i) in textbooks, questions at the end of topic sections are by their nature blocked, so that candidates are subconsciously encouraged to revise that way and (ii) in the last academic year, most assessments have been blocked as we all collect data to justify TAGs.

So it's possible that this year more than any other, we've got students who block rather than interleave, which makes this an important paper to read (and luckily, it's pretty readable.)

Previous research shows that interleaving rather than blocking practice of different skills usually improves subsequent test performance.

Here’s our latest offer…

We're thinking a lot about revision, as you might expect by this week's topic. Together we've developed a one-hour crash course in teaching the best revision techniques to students. It's a session for teachers; it's evidence-informed, quick and clear, and it comes with 5 new practice activities we've written and trialled in the past year, as well as a PowerPoint of useful slides, many of which can be used directly with students.

For 13s, who've never taken a high stakes exam, and 12s, who are used to end-of-topic assessments, we hope it's particularly useful.

Interested? We're going to fly through the new material on Zoom for you, on Wednesday 6th October at 3:45pm. It's free. Get in touch if you want the Zoom link. (We're going to try and keep it small; these sessions work better when there are a handful of us and we can have a proper discussion.)

Cheers all. Have a good weekend!

Steve and Martin

p.s. We're not sponsored or anything, but we recently came across a Spotify stream called Flow State ('providing the soundtrack to your work.') A dreamy voice introduces the stream, then minimal instrumental music plays for 25 minutes or so. When 25 minutes is up, you're encouraged to get up, move around and take a 5-minute break, before the music begins and you go back to the task at hand.

It's a good way of structuring 25-minute revision sessions, and would certainly go well with our activity 20 Minute Sprints from The GCSE Mindset. It might appeal to those students learning to strengthen and extend their concentration too.

Listen to Flow State on Spotify. Welcome to Flow State! A podcast designed to help you focus. I'm your host, Bobby Lyte, a DJ and producer, here to provide a curated playlist of minimal, instrumental, electronic music - the soundtrack to your work. I'll also be following the popular Pomodoro technique - 30 minutes of music for you to work to, followed by a 5 minute break. In my other life I'm a software engineer, and so this podcast is a colliding of two worlds for me: electronic music and deep focused coding. Wishing you the joy of flow state.