Happy Friday!

Two quick notices before we jump in this week. First…

Yes, our wonderful publisher Crown House are running a flash sale that ends today! It’s a flippin’ amazing 50% off pretty much all stock, they tell us, which means it’s the perfect time to bulk buy. Some of these beauties below will cost you just over a fiver. A fiver, folks! Fancy taking advantage? Follow these links or forward them to your librarian:

The Backpacker’s Guide to University

The VESPA Handbook

The Student Mindset

The GCSE Mindset

The A Level Mindset

Oh-kay. Secondly, a reminder that we’re filling up in the Summer for staff CPD so if you’re looking ahead to staff inset days and you fancy a session (i) introducing VESPA, or on (ii) Building Independent Learning, or (iii) Motivation, Goal-setting and Agency, or (iv) Evidence-based Revision, or (v) anything else VESPA-adjacent, get in touch at info@vespa.academy and we’ll fit you in!

Once last thing - this is our last newsletter before Easter, remember, so you’ll be seeing us again in a few weeks. Right, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This study has been an interesting one to pick apart this week. Here’s the long and short of it:

• Students are asked to do a very short bursts of revision in preparation for a test - just 24 minutes, split into two 12 minute sections.

• They’re split into three groups. One group note-take. The next write extended explanations of the material they’re reading. The third are asked to plan and prepare a lesson.

Just 24 minutes is all the three groups spend - how much impact could that have on a 12-mark exam taken a little later on? Well, enough to make a statistically significant difference in recall, that’s for sure.

And there’s an interesting theory explored in this paper as well - that those students preparing to teach are imbued with a confidence - a ‘power’, the study calls it - that is the result of preparing to be an expert on a subject; a rise in agency, perhaps, a change of mindset.

You can download the pdf of the paper here. It’s a pretty approachable one, fairly straightforward to read, (statistical analysis aside!)

The Powerful Teacher: A Power Hypothesis for the Benefits of Learning-by-Teaching - Educational Psychology Review

Why does teaching others enhance one’s learning? This study advanced a novel power hypothesis of learning-by-teaching: When assuming the role of a teacher, students experience a heightened sense of power in influencing others, which increases their own learning. Indeed, teaching is powerful.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-025-10097-1

Portal Talk...

The Easter Bunny has been busy this week! Not with chocolate eggs, but with something arguably even more exciting for schools: a free downloadable VESPA poster set 😂

You can find it here:

VESPA Academy — The Five Habits of Academic Success

We have made our VESPA poster set free for schools to access, download and print.

The page opens with the main VESPA poster, but it is also interactive. Just click at the top of the page to open individual posters for each of the five VESPA elements: Vision, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude.

The main poster gives a clear overview of the VESPA model, and at the top of the page you can also click through to open individual posters for each of the five elements -Vision, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude.

Perfect for classrooms, sixth form centres, study spaces, tutor rooms or anywhere students might benefit from a quiet reminder that success is usually a bit more Vision and Effort than last-minute panic and wishful thinking.

We should be honest: this is, of course, a little bit of VESPA marketing dressed up as a helpful Easter freebie. But it’s also genuinely useful, looks good on a wall, and is completely free for any school to download and print, whether you use the VESPA Coaching Portal or not.

And if you are not yet using the portal, but would like to see how schools are using VESPA more fully through questionnaires, reports, coaching tools and practical student activities, you are very welcome to get in touch. It is the last week to take advantage of our free VESPA Questionnaire cycle promotion, so do get in touch if you would like to learn more!

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students in the period it matters most.

Something to try...

We’ve taken this week’s paper (above) and turned it into a powerpoint for subscribers!

It’s not just a handful of slides explaining the study, though. We wanted to give you more then that.

What you’re getting is a complete explanation of why not all revision is equal. You’ll be introduced to three types of revision, then given a list of imaginary students who each limit themselves to a particular revision strategy. Great for a tutorial or classroom activity where your learners get to predict which students will do best…

Happy Friday!

Easter’s nearly with us! (We know our Welsh colleagues only have another week to go, the lucky so-and-sos…) We’ll be pinging you another newsletter, 183, on Friday 27th, then we’ll be taking a break before returning after Easter in April.

Before we start, a quick announcement: we’re filling up in the Summer for staff CPD and student sessions. There’s still some availability through May, June and July, but it’s getting pretty full now, so if you’re looking ahead to staff inset days and you fancy a session (i) introducing VESPA, or on (ii) Building Independent Learning, or (iii) Motivation, Goal-setting and Agency, or (iv) Evidence-based Revision, or (v) anything else VESPA-adjacent, get in touch at info@vespa.academy and we’ll fit you in!

Right, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

Two items of interest in the AI space this week. First, this is a bit of fun, but should also generate some discussion. It’s a quiz in which you - and more importantly, students! - have to guess how good large language models were at solving a series of problems.

For each problem, the AI models were given ten attempts, so the question is the same for each task - how many correct attempts, out of 10, were made each time?

At the end, your answers are compared to the real outcomes so you can see if you’re someone who overestimates AI’s ability, or underestimates. It’s a decent tutorial activity!

Can you predict what AI will do?

quiz.wholesum.tech

OK, next. This study of AI and cheating came to our attention a little while ago and we forgot to share it.

On first reading, there’s a lot that’s shocking and depressing about this. Yeah, we mean the percentage of American students who admit to engaging in academic dishonesty. After a bit of reflection, though, we thought let’s get real. If we’d been asked if we’d cheated in some small way back in high school - copying someone else’s homework is included for example - we’d have had to fess up. What student doesn’t spend high school borrowing ideas, stealing a few sentences that start an essay in just the right way, half-inching someone’s take and passing it off as their own, or fibbing about where a solution came from? (Though we never engaged in anything above that level, you understand…)

Before you take a look, some headlines to reflect on:

• “24.27% of students reported using artificial intelligence as unauthorized aids during assessments, assignments, or homework.”

• However, when the researchers dug deeper, most students weren’t using it to generate an entire response for them; the top uses were “idea generation” and “text summary.”

• But some students - between 9 and 15% depending upon the type of school - are using AI to generate entire responses.

Long and short of it folks, despite the arrival of LLMs, cheating has remained broadly stable. Don’t skip the paper though, there’s loads of interesting findings. (At a push, ask ChatGTP to summarise it for you 😂…)

Cheating in the second year of generative AI chatbots: a follow-up study on high school student cheating behaviors

This study examines the evolving relationship between AI chatbots and academic integrity and students’ AI chatbot usage in high schools one and a half years after the release of ChatGPT.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-026-10587-1

Something to try...

Last week we shared a video Martin recorded for a group of schools, covering reward systems that encourage students to revise effectively.

And this week we’ve got one more for you; one that’s thematically linked. This one’s a whistle-stop tour of motivation, looking at how to create a culture that promotes motivated study, as well as how individuals can motivate themselves…

Happy Friday!

Let’s dive straight in this week.

Something we're reading...

We crossed paths with a really interesting study recently. 600-odd students’ time management skills, and decision-making skills, were assessed against their use of social media. We know that high levels of engagement with short-form video reduce concentration, but might they affect time management, and even decision-making?

Well… the effect sizes are small but the answer is yes, as it turns out. Before we look at the study itself, we thought you might be interested in the two scales used to measure (i) time management and (ii) decision making. Your own students could take the questionnaires if you wanted to involve them, reproduce the study, or just raise awareness.

The time management measure is a famous one - if students want to take the questionnaire themselves, you can use this image:

And students can take the decision-making questionnaire used in the study here:

Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire, MDMQ

Online version of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ) designed to assess how individuals approach decision situations.

psytests.org/coping/mdmqen.html#:~:text=Online%20version%20of%20the%20Melbourne,Mann%2C%201982).

OK, on to the study itself, which is here:

Frontiers | The relationships between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles

The present study examined the relationship between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles. The sample consisted of 612 student participants…

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1702767/full?hl=en-US

But what were the exact findings? we hear you cry. Effect-sizes are small, but…

• “we observed a positive association between academic achievement and time management skills… time management behaviours (e.g., goal setting) are related to perceived control, which in turn is associated with beneficial outcomes such as reduced stress and better performance.”

• “…longer social media use emerged as a significant negative predictor of the time planning, time attitudes and time wasters subscales. These results suggest that higher levels of social media use tend to be accompanied by lower time management scores.”

• “We found positive associations between social media use and the buckpassing, procrastinating, and hypervigilance dimensions of [decision-making]… greater social media use was associated with lower decision self-esteem and lower vigilance (careful decision-making).”

Interesting stuff!

Portal Talk...

Staying with phones for a little longer now. During student sessions, we’re often gathering live responses to questions, then showing students their compiled answers. One of our questions is, “in a one-hour revision session, how many times do you check your phone?” Here’s some data we collected in a recent session:

Over half say it is 6 times or more. Less than ten percent say they don’t check for the full hour. Blimey. As our activity in The VESPA Handbook, Deep Work and Distraction Cost explores, if students are breaking concentration every few minutes, revision becomes shallower, slower and far less effective. That’s why we spend so much time helping students build stronger routines and more deliberate control over their attention!

We were interested recently to speak with Bertie Aspinall, Co-Founder of SafetyMode ,

SafetyMode has been developed in partnership with Mumsnet. They’re a social impact product - the plan is to give schools more control over students’ smartphone use on site. In effect, it allows schools to limit which apps are accessible on school grounds, making smartphones a lot less smart, at least during the school day. The platform also includes gizmos that can block or flag harmful content in real time, without data leaving the phone.

SafetyMode is currently looking for schools interested in joining a trial, and we’re happy to help them spread the word. Participating schools can offer the tool to parents at a discounted rate, hopefully helping align the approach between school and home. So if your school is trying to balance the reality that students have smartphones, parents expect contact, and staff don’t want to spend all day acting as app police as well as asking every second kid to tuck their shirt in, Safetymode might be worth a look. If you’re interested, contact Bertie at bertie@safetymode.com or Tony at tony@vespa.academy or find out more by clicking the logo above.

…and if you’d like to see how we help schools tackle revision habits, focus and independent learning more broadly, you can book a short demo of the VESPA Portal here:

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Something to try...

We’ve got a video for you today! In it, Martin discusses reward systems designed to motivate students to revise effectively.

Not all organisations have this one right. Some assume the exam results are reward enough, others over-reward what should be expected study-behaviours; it’s a tricky balance to strike, so hopefully this could give you a starting point for discussion…

Happy Friday!

This week, this, from BBC Maestro, caught our eye…

We’re using it to discuss the inevitability of inconsistent performance in the early stages of practice.

Last chance on this one: fancy a fifteen-session curriculum exploring effective, evidence-based revision for KS4 or 5 students? Maybe you want to come along to a session Martin’s running for Bath Spa University’s Network for Learning on March 12th. You get a handout for all fifteen sessions, plus the powerpoint if you want it. A bargain at twice the price! Here are the details - click the pic:

And another reminder: it’s the perfect time of year for snagging yourself a few copies of this beauty! Click the pic - or if you want to go direct to the publisher, you can do so here:

Right. Let's dive in.

Something we're reading...

We spent a long train journey to a college we’re working with, listening to this excellent episode of Amol Rajan’s Radical, in which he talks to Zero Gravity founder Joe Seddon about education and social mobility.

It’s a fascinating listen. We took a lot of notes. Seddon’s an economist, so there’s an undeniable value-for-money focus on his messaging, particularly on university courses - it’s something we’ve thought about a lot since listening. Seddon argues certain degrees from certain universities aren’t worth the time and debt; labour-market information shows us these graduates are highly unlikely to ever pay their loans back. Seddon’s position on this is clear - these courses shouldn’t be run. We’re a little less black-and-white on the issue…

Whatever your views, it’s a great conversation, time-stamped if you want to jump through it topic-by-topic. Enjoy!

Radical with Amol Rajan - Social Mobility: How to Break the Link Between Background and Opportunity (Joe Seddon) - BBC Sounds

Regional inequality is holding people back, and Joe Seddon wants to do something about it.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002rgj9

Then, on the journey home we had a read of this - a recent report from The Sutton Trust, also worth a look:

Degrees of Difference - The Sutton Trust

What role does higher education play in driving social mobility across the world?

www.suttontrust.com/our-research/degrees-of-difference

Portal Talk...

A quick reminder of our newsletter promotion for you this week. Book a demo with us, and you get a free round of the VESPA questionnaire for up to 100 students:

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

calendly.com/vespaacademy/newsletter-promotion?utm_source=vespa.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=friday-mindset-179

Something to try...

A video and accompanying handout for subscribers today!

We’re often asked to record online material for CPD platforms. Some platforms survive, others pivot or vanish, and we’re left with the recordings and nothing to do with them. So this week we thought we’d clip a section to share with you.

In this one, you’re getting Steve and Martin introducing a Practice activity from The VESPA Handbook called Verbal Recaps. It’s a quick and powerful way to get students revising in a more cognitively active way…

Happy Friday!

Hope you had a good break folks.

Three things before we kick-off. First, here’s a lovely one for the new half term: a motto or manifesto -

Next, a quick item of business - The Backpacker’s Guide to University continues to garner some lovely reviews, and it’s the perfect time of year to distribute some copies - why not bag your library a few?

And finally, an online training course. Run by Martin, this one’s via Bath Spa University’s Network for Learning. It’s a cracker - fifteen sessions to boost effective revision at KS4 and 5, each with handouts. There’s still a couple of places left so click the pic if you want to know more:

OK, all done. Onto this week’s stuff - let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

We’ve really enjoyed this piece by psychologist Rob Lefort about failure. He writes with a measured clarity that students will, with a bit of work, really get.

“Most of us get stuck,” he argues, “because we can’t separate the act from the actor… make a mistake, and suddenly you’re not someone who did something wrong, you’re someone who is wrong.” And he goes on, expressing an idea in one sentence that we’ve tried and failed to say so precisely in hundreds of attempts: “when the mistake is who you are, rather than what you did, there’s nothing to build on.”

We don’t love the brief and weirdly pointless reference to the Manhattan Project (unless we’ve misunderstood something?) Other than that, it’s a terrific read, a really good one for students. Here it is:

Succeeding at Failure: Why Getting it Wrong is How You Get it Right

Most people get failure wrong—they either ignore it or let it define them. Here's how to fail productively, extract the lessons, and actually grow from your mistakes.

www.theuntangledself.com/p/succeeding-at-failure-why-getting

Portal Talk...

The tabs problem is over.

You know the one. Student sits down for their termly review. The conversation is going well. You've got their VESPA coaching report open, you understand their mindset, you're getting somewhere, and then someone mentions their UCAS application and suddenly you're wrestling with three other windows, a PDF someone emailed you in September, and a reference you definitely started but can't find.

We’ve decided to do something about this!

Introducing VESPA's new UCAS suite — live now.

The UCAS application now lives right alongside the VESPA coaching report. Same page. Same conversation. No switching, no losing your thread.

The new UCAS Feature sits above the current VESPA Coaching Report

Tutors get a full view of each student's application progress and can write their reference with a split-screen showing the student's VESPA report simultaneously. No more toggling back and forth trying to remember what you were about to write.

Tutor View - Tutors get a full 360 view. Subject references, student draft application and VESPA comments all in one place.

Better still: subject teachers can add comments directly, and students can request them. So by the time an application reaches a tutor, it already has a complete, 360° picture (the coaching data, the subject insights, the student's own words) all in one place.

The bit tutors will love most?

The UCAS Feedback Coach reviews each student's application before it reaches you. It gives tailored, specific feedback on draft personal statements so that by the time it lands on you it's already well-formed. You're adding your expertise and experience, not rewriting from scratch. Fewer back-and-forths. More meaningful conversations.

Our UCAS Feedback is designed to provide students with feedback and guidance BEFORE the application reaches the tutor

Coming soon: UniGuide 🧭

The final piece of the puzzle. A short conversation with our AI Uniguide advisor helps students figure out not just what they're applying for, but why, and surfaces the right courses and universities to match. Think of it as the conversation a careers advisor would have, available to every student, every time.

More on that very soon. In the meantime, if you want to see the UCAS suite in action, book in below.

Newsletter Promotion

Interested in the UCAS Feature? Or simply wish to learn more about our portal? Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal.

Something to try...

A new VESPA activity for subscribers today! There’s already 120 of them - 40 in The A Level Mindset, another 40 in The GCSE Mindset, and 40 new ones in the award-winning VESPA Handbook… but we come across new research all the time, and we can’t help ourselves.

This is an Effort activity called The Try Your Best Effect. In 2014, 25,000 students were asked if they ‘tried their best’ to do three school/college related study things.

Those who said they did, had their exam results compared to those who didn’t. And the effect was marked…

Happy Friday!

It’s our last issue before half term! We made it. Barely alive, and ready for a long lie-in. We’ll be taking our usual two weeks off writing this, then coming back on Friday February 27th.

Our training session (Effective Exam Intervention) is now full. If you missed last week’s announcement and you’re kicking yourself, we’re hoping to run the session again nearer to Easter, so keep an eye out.

OK, in the meantime, we’ve got some great stuff to share, so let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Clinical Psychologist Ross White works with organisations on building flexibility and resilience. This piece caught our eye recently, with its focus on purpose (and by extension, the vision element of VESPA.)

The commonly used idea of ‘seeking’ or ‘finding’ purpose is an unhelpful one, White argues. The replacement of ‘finding’ with ‘forming’ in the essay title was a useful one for us, as was the suggested activity, which White calls ‘a day on purpose’, during which clients design a day away from work, lived entirely deliberately and purposefully rather than accidentally.

Here it is:

Your purpose isn’t something to find, it’s something you form | Psyche Ideas

In my therapy office, I’ve found that to live with greater purpose, we must think differently about where it comes from

psyche.co/ideas/your-purpose-isnt-something-to-find-its-something-you-form

Portal Talk...

A reminder this week about FL4SH — Tony’s revision app designed around the forgetting/retrieval loop, so revision becomes a habit rather than a panic.

What it helps with:

• All UK exam boards — AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas, CCEA and SQA. (Also International and Vocational Qualifications)

• Course-specific content — not generic “Biology”, but your GCSE or A-Level specification and topic structure

• Fast flashcard creation — so students actually make the cards (instead of planning to make them)

• Spaced repetition built in — the app nudges the right cards at the right time, before they fade

Want to have a sneak peek? Follow the link below…

FL4SH - Flashcard App for GCSE & A-Level

Download FL4SH now on iOS and Android. AI-powered flashcards, 10,000+ exam topics, past papers included. Get Pro free for 30 days.

www.fl4shcards.com

Something to try...

A parent was telling us about the difficulty her teenage son has got himself into. Three A levels and an EPQ - which means loads of submissions all coming at once. He’s disorganised, demotivated, and faced with the prospect of three major hand-ins, none of which he’s got round to actually starting yet. He’s done the counting - and it’s 10,000 words in a month or he’s toast.

So we’ve put together a document for him, one that helps him stay on track, but also gives him tips for staying motivated.

And we thought we’d share it with subscribers, in case you’re dealing with a student who’s fallen behind and is facing an epic fight to stay in the game…

Happy Friday!

OK, we have a free training session coming up. We’ve been doing a fair bit of work recently with disengaged students who are two or more grades from where they want to be, and are mired in despondency and inertia. It’s a tough gig… but we think we’ve got something that’s making a difference, and we’d like to share it.

We’ll be trying to keep numbers small, so get in quickly! The details:

DATE: Monday February 9th, at 3:45pm for 45 minutes.

TOPIC: Effective Pre-Exam Intervention

If you’d like to come along, email info@vespa.academy, and we’ll send you the Zoom link. Of course you’ll get the all-important powerpoint too.

OK! Onto this week’s stuff.

We’ve not banged on about resolutions at all this year. We’ve been keeping our powder dry having been inspired by Austin Kleon. “February’s a better month for resolutions than January,” Kleon argues in a piece called ‘A Clean Four Weeks’…

A clean four weeks - Austin Kleon

February is a good month for a Practice and Suck Less challenge.

austinkleon.com/2021/02/01/a-clean-four-weeks

…and the notion got us thinking. Could we set a Four Week February Resolution?

Let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Scott Young writes well here about strategies to help you read one book per week.

So how about we all share the same February Resolution - to read four books by March 1st. If you’re short on ideas, we’re going to suggest your four-book curriculum right here. But first, Young’s quick and simple guide to reading more:

How to Read One Book Per Week (Even if You Read Slowly) - Scott H Young

Nine strategies I use to read a book per week. No speed-reading required.

www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2025/12/10/read-one-book-per-week

Now your suggestions. We’ve kept them all relatively short, and we’ve chosen stuff we’ve read and loved…

Week One

Vision, ambition, purpose

Week Two

Calm, effective, reflective

Week Three

When to quit

Week Four

Working class kids

…but what do we know? Read four books you’re excited to get your teeth into. And spread the word among your students too!

Bonus: Adam Mastroianni (a regular here) argues, in another beautifully constructed essay, that the death of reading has actually been exaggerated…

Text is king

read on, queen

www.experimental-history.com/p/text-is-king

Something to try...

We read a lot about AI, regularly, and keep up to date with what’s going on.

And what really gets us mad is the “it’s coming for our jobs and no-one’s safe” white-collar-blood-bath narrative we hear so often. It’s ill-informed guesswork and it’s bad for students. No wonder nouveau nihilism is on the rise.

So in this week’s powerpoint, we’re taking you through a fascinating AI-related study.

A group of computer programmers - often cited as the first profession that will be entirely culled - are tasked with using AI to help complete a series of regular work jobs. You’ll be amazed at what happens…

Happy Friday!

No time to lose, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This article, from The Guardian, caught our attention a couple of Sundays ago. It’s definitely one to read with students at KS4 or 5 - an interesting exploration of a study about the likelihood of sticking to challenging personal goals.

The piece outlines the difference between intrinsically motivating goals - where the process of pursuing the goal is in itself a positive experience, and the outcome is less important - and extrinsically motivating goals - where the process of pursuit is challenging, often unpleasant, but the outcome is highly desirable.

Which type of goal leads to greater commitment? Well, the clue’s in the article-title.

OK, so there’s a number of irritating adverts cluttering the screen in the online version, so we’ve also trimmed the piece so it fits on 2 sides of A4, and turned it into a handy, ad-free pdf for you.

The piece itself is here:

Why pleasure is the key to self-improvement

Forget puritanical self-discipline – the way to really make a new habit stick is to lace it with instant gratification

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/11/why-pleasure-is-the-key-to-self-improvement

And here’s your ad-free version:

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation - David Robson article.pdf

drive.google.com/file/d/1Sptk15A4syV-4XT0tZ8lJ5_JcFMcT0AR/view?usp=sharing

Finally, if you fancy reading the research Robson’s article references, it’s led by Kaitlin Wolley (Cornell University) and it’s here. Click the ‘pdf’ button on the right:

Adherence to Personal Resolutions Across Time, Culture, and Goal Domains - Kaitlin Woolley, Laura M. Giurge, Ayelet Fishbach, 2025

Goal setting is only somewhat more common than the failure to follow through on one’s goals. Recognizing the challenge of long-term behavior change, we asked wh...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976251350960

(Subscribers, you’re about to get a powerpoint breaking the study down and explaining it for students, with some suggestions for how they might set better study goals for 2026…)

Portal Talk...

Just a quick reminder for Friday Mindset subscribers — you can still claim 1 free cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire.

Demos are booking up fast and we’ve got no availability next week, so if you’d like to use the offer, please make sure you book your demo before February half-term.

Book a demo using the link below and we’ll include:

• 1 FREE VESPA Questionnaire cycle (up to 100 students)

• Trial access to the Coaching Portal so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — when it matters most

Key details

• Questionnaire must be completed by 30 March 2026 (pre-Easter)

• One free cycle per school

• Max 100 students for the free cycle

If you want tutor time to produce more than “good luck everyone”… this is a great moment to try a simple structure that genuinely shifts mindset and behaviour.

Book your demo here:

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Something to try...

OK, the Kaitlin Woolley goal-setting study from above, in detail!

The powerpoint takes you through exactly how the study worked - including the questionnaire participants took. This means you could get your kids to reflect on a goal they have, and take the questionnaire themselves. (It’s a simple six-question one which gives you some immediate, very simple feedback to discuss, and introduces the two types of goal.)

And you’ll end with five suggestions for how to make study goals more intrinsically motivating…

Happy Friday!

First, a quick hello to new subscribers 👋 Periodically, we migrate our questionnaire users to the newsletter list so there are a group of new readers this week. We’d love you to stick around! Have a look for a couple of issues, we’ll try and be useful, and if it’s not for you, just hit ‘unsubscribe’ later on.

And secondly, a reminder for sixth form folk! It’s that time of year again, introducing Year 12 to their future options, giving them a sense of the courses they might study at 18, and the grades they might need to make it happen. So, if you want a general intro to university study… Martin’s standing by to help.

Yep, it’s The Backpacker’s Guide to University!

If you’d like an intro to next-level study, online or in-person, for your students (we do staff sessions too…) plus a few giveaway copies of The Backpacker’s Guide to University, (co-written with university teacher Dr Jo Phillips) get in touch at info@vespa.academy, outlining what you’re hoping for, and Martin will get back to you! Done and dusted.

Right, time to dive in…

Something we're reading...

We were really taken with this essay.

Clinical psychologist Rob Lefort writes persuasively about the dangers of comfort, and the necessity of friction and challenge if we are to learn new things and improve our lives. (Subscribers - this read goes really well with a currently- featured video on VESPA Videos called The Danger of Discomfort, so pair them up!)

There’s clarity and insight in this piece, presented in easy and compelling images and ideas. The full article drops a single f-bomb, so we’ve trimmed it, done a little light editing, and turned it into a pdf for a quick tutorial read. The piece is here:

The Effort-Avoidance Bias: When Choosing Comfort Makes Your Life Smaller

Why laziness, procrastination, and avoidance are the same psychological mechanism—and how deliberately seeking friction rewires your brain from protection mode to growth mode

www.theuntangledself.com/p/the-effort-avoidance-bias-when-choosing

…and your family-friendly version is here:

Rob Lefort on the importance of discomfort.pdf

drive.google.com/file/d/1GOX2hxnk3EX2taYilpTJC5OGNqXGRifn/view?usp=sharing

It’s a great read for this time of year. Get it out to the kids asap 👍

Portal Talk...

The 3-Week Miracle Worker (And Other Revision Myths)

We've all seen it. The student who suddenly discovers their notes exist three weeks before exams, armed with seventeen highlighters and the desperate belief that if they just stare hard enough at their textbook, knowledge will somehow osmose through their eyeballs.

The uncomfortable truth about how memory actually works: your brain is designed to forget. Not because it's faulty—because it's efficient. It bins information it doesn't think you need.

The fix? Make it need it. Repeatedly.

A calmer way to do revision (that still works when life is busy)

www.fl4shcards.com

We’ve been building something to make this easier to do consistently, without students needing superhero organisation skills:

FL4SH — a revision app designed around the forgetting/retrieval loop, so revision becomes a habit rather than a panic.

What it helps with:

• All UK exam boards — AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas, CCEA and SQA. (Also International and Vocational Qualifications)

• Course-specific content — not generic “Biology”, but your GCSE or A-Level specification and topic structure

• Fast flashcard creation — so students actually make the cards (instead of planning to make them)

• Spaced repetition built in — the app nudges the right cards at the right time, before they fade

We've included our very own Leitner Box activity slides, our inspiration for the App, see link below, for access.

Practice - Leitner Box

Learn how to improve studying with the Leitner Box method. Discover why simply reading flashcards is not enough and how to effectively summarize and remember key information. Understand the forgetting curve and enhance your memory retention for exams.

FL4SH is on track to launch in February 2026. Head to www.fl4shcards.com for more information and to join the waitlist — and please do share with colleagues, students and parents.

If you would like to discuss the new app or learn more about our online coaching portal. Or if you are interested in our current offer of 1 cycle of the VESPA questionnaire FREE before Easter - please use my link below to arrange a demo!

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Something to try...

This week, we’ve got a simple powerpoint for you, called James Clear’s Principles. You’ll know Clear’s work; Atomic Habits has sold millions of copies and is a great read, really useful for students who are trying to change, who want to be better, but can’t quite find the motivation or discipline.

In this presentation, we share twelve of Clear’s pieces of advice for taking control, beating bad habits, and making progress. Like others in the series (this is the third ‘principles’ powerpoint we’ve put together), the idea is to study, discuss and reflect upon each piece of advice…

Happy Friday… and happy new year!

Sixth form folk: it’s that time again - the time to introduce Year 12 to their future options. Whether you call it Future Week or What Next? or Introducing Higher Education and Employment, this is the term when 12s start getting a sense of the courses they might study at 18, and the grades they might need to make it happen. So, if you want a general intro to university study… Martin’s standing by to help.

Yep, it’s The Backpacker’s Guide to University!

If you’d like an intro to next-level study, online or in-person, for your students (we do staff sessions too…) plus a few giveaway copies of The Backpacker’s Guide to University (co-written with university teacher Dr Jo Phillips), all at a very reasonable cost, get in touch at info@vespa.academy, outlining what you’re hoping for, and Martin will get back to you! Lovely stuff.

OK, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

We’re fans of Ryan Holliday’s early work, and loved The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy. (A quick check of his site shows there’s a few we haven’t caught up on…)

And we really enjoyed this blog post. A great piece to read yourself, or to introduce to geeky students who are looking to dive deeper into a subject and read more in 2026. (We’ve done a lot of work on reading, focus, concentration, and proactive independent learning with schools and colleges - get in touch at info@vespa.academy if you’d like a staff session.)

Make 2026 the year of reading:

These Are My Reading Rules For 2026 - RyanHoliday.net

For roughly five thousand years, humans have been writing things down in books.  You can, at the snap of your fingers, talk to the wisest people who ever lived. Sadly, too many people are not taught how to read well, how to actually extract something usable from the books available to us, how to dive into the rabbit hole of knowledge to master a topic.

ryanholiday.net/my-reading-rules-for-2026

Portal Talk...

Just a quick reminder for Friday Mindset subscribers — our free VESPA Questionnaire cycle offer is still available.

Why now? Because we’re heading into that annual window where exams suddenly become “quite important actually”… and tutor time turns into equal parts panic, pep-talks, and students thinking that "just studying on “vibes” will be okay!

This is when coaching matters most — practical, structured conversations that help students:

• calm the noise

• get clear on next steps

• build habits that stick

• head into exams with the right mindset and a plan

Book a demo using the link below and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Offer details:

• Free questionnaire cycle (max 100 students)

• Coaching Portal trial included (limited access)

• Questionnaire must be completed by 30th March 2026 (pre-Easter)

• One cycle per school

If you want tutor time to produce more than “good luck everyone”… this is a great moment to try a structure that actually shifts mindset and behaviour.

Something to try...

A powerpoint for you this week!

We’ve been ages putting this one together - a long process of thinking and designing that began with a series of student conversations.

They were conversations about frustration. We heard comments like: ‘Why does <subject> have to be so complicated?’ or ‘My teacher always over-analyses things’ or ‘They make it harder than it should be.’ Reflecting on this, we remembered a university lecturer talking about ‘the circle of knowledge’, and had an idea for a presentation and discussion.

This one’s good for KS4 or 5 classes…

Happy Friday!

Right folks, last one before the holidays - next edition comes on Friday 9th January.

The tree is up in reception, the kids are getting flighty and you’ve been Whamageddoned at the Christmas markets, where you spent fifteen quid on a pie the size of a water biscuit. But console yourself. Break out a sachet of dishwater hot chocolate, brew up, and let’s take ten minutes while everyone else tries driving home through the rain-drenched madness.

Time to dive in…

Something we're reading...

First, a quick one for subscribers, to go with last week’s powerpoint about the 2026 Double-Your-Luck Challenge. If only we’d seen this in time! It’s an episode of Curious Cases featuring Richard Wiseman discussing his luck research. Well worth a tutorial listen before setting the challenge! Here it is:

Just My Luck

Podcast Episode · Curious Cases · 24/10/2025 · 29m

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/just-my-luck/id1084340508?i=1000733279135

And for this week’s read, we’ve got a similarly New-Yearsy feel.

It’s the work of a writer and podcaster, the University of Michigan’s Brad Stulberg. Stulberg’s interest is in public health, but not of the eat-your-greens-and-get-some-sleep variety. Instead, Stulberg focuses on the potentially damaging effects of technology. (Subscribers, you may recognise him from the powerpoint exploring the impact of Chat GTP use on Essay Writing.)

In this piece, he explores the idea of chaos, arguing that some people subconsciously but deliberately invite chaos into their lives. As soon as we read this, we were reminded of the great Steven Pressfield’s observations on resistance (the force that stops us doing our best work) in one of Martin’s favourite books - The War of Art. Pressfield wrote this over twenty years ago, but it’s timeless. Appropriate for this time of year, too. I bet we all know students from families like this:

The War of Art, folks. Buy it!

Stulberg is surely aware of Pressfield’s work - you can feel the influence in his expression of ideas - and he makes a great case for banishing chaos from our lives in 2026. This is a terrific quick tutorial read…

Why So Many People Are Addicted to Chaos

And how to find more genuine sources of aliveness and meaning.

bradstulberg.substack.com/p/why-so-many-people-are-addicted-to?r=8g7ur&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

Portal Talk...

We’ve given our Student Activities a serious glow-up in the VESPA Portal. The summer update has now had its own makeover – it’s smoother, cleaner and much easier for staff to assign activities and for students to build their own bespoke programme. Originally, MYVESPA activities were auto-prescribed from students’ VESPA scores. Helpful, but a bit… “computer says do this.” To build more independent, self-aware learners, we’ve introduced Search by Problem:

• Students start with the problem (“I leave everything to the last minute”, “I don’t know how to revise”)

• They then choose targeted activities designed to tackle that specific issue.

• In other words: less prescription, more ownership.

We’ve now rolled this Search by Problem engine out beyond MYVESPA into:

• Tutor Resources – making it easier to plan sharper, needs-led tutorials

• VESPA Videos – so staff and students can find the right clip for the right conversation

We’ve also added a bit of gamification to the MYVESPA page:

• Students earn points and prizes for completing activities

• No more “click to complete” without thinking – they must engage properly, reflect, and submit before they can finish and score.

🎥 See it in action:

MYVESPA – Student Activity Dashboard

Short video showing how students can create a bespoke programme, and complete activities to earn points.

MYVESPA - Staff Activity Dashboard

Short Video showing how staff can view, allocate and provide feedback on student activities.

If you’d like a quick tour (10–15 minutes), use the link below to book a demo – we’ll walk you through how this could work with your students and staff.

Portal Demo - Tony Dennis

Select this option for a short 15min meeting to discuss questions you might have about the VESA Portal, or student psychometric

Something to try...

We’ve been doing some work recently with a college who wanted our help with high grades. Their students just weren’t getting the outcomes towards the top of the assessment criteria; kids were stalling a couple of grades below. Why?

We’re in a very lucky position - we’ve visited hundreds of schools and colleges here and abroad, and we’ve had time and space to spot the kind of patterns that are hard to see when your head’s just in one context and institution. So we put together seven things teachers should be doing to raise high grades, and delivered it to staff.

And we thought we’d share it with you this week…

Happy Friday!

December’s here at last. This is our penultimate newsletter of 2026 - this one, another on Friday 12th, then we’re taking a break and revving up for the new year. Nearly there folks, nearly there.

Lots to interest us this week, despite being knackered. A couple of things we’re observing with interest for example - the decline in social media use tells an interesting story. And we’re hearing increasingly about the idea of video fatigue too.

Interesting times, particularly given our article recommendation this week. Let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This piece from Canadian teacher Andrew Cantarutti caught our eye recently. Cantarutti makes a case for reconsidering the position of schools in society. At the moment, he argues, schools follow; rushing to integrate whatever changes society throws at them. (There’s a period of growth in AI, schools scramble to integrate AI into their curricula, assessment and teaching.)

Instead, Cantarutti argues, schools should lead. If evidence strongly suggests certain types of technology erode attention, schools should provide spaces where students can work away from them, removing them from learning environments, not ceaselessly incorporating them.

This is way more measured than mere ludditism, well worth a read. The article we started with is here:

Why Attention Must Become Curriculum

Making Schools Sanctuaries of Focus in an Age of Distraction

walledgardenedu.substack.com/p/why-attention-must-become-curriculum?r=8g7ur&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

But there’s an equally well-considered follow-up here as well. Two-for-one, folks.

Portal Talk.

We sat down together to talk through another VESPA questionnaire report this week. Here it is:

Zoom in to have a closer look!

Steve: Of course lower scores catch your eye, don’t they. A discussion of organisation would be a useful place to start. One of the suggested Systems questions is, ‘How do you know what work you have outstanding?’ The answer will be revealing.

Martin: Chances are we’ll be hearing about a life that feels chaotic to them.

Tony: There could be good reasons for it. Asking the student to talk us through their week so far might throw up some interesting obstacles to organisation, like family responsibilities for example.

Steve: Yeah. And I’d want to get into that vision score too. Starting with, ‘If you could only study one subject at this level, what would it be and why?’ I always like hearing answers to that question.

Martin: Or ‘Describe a lesson you’ve enjoyed recently.’ It seems such a simple one, that, but it’s so revealing of students’ values and preferences and interests. There might be clues lurking in the answer.

OK! One more thing: here’s our working demo of the staff coaching page in case you missed it last week:

VESPA Staff Overview - Interactive Demo

And if you’d like to learn more about how our Coaching Portal can be used in your school, please schedule a quick demo using the link below:

Portal Demo - Tony Dennis

Select this option for a short 15min meeting to discuss questions you might have about the VESA Portal, or student psychometric

calendly.com/vespaacademy/15minmeeting

Something to try...

We’ve been thinking about agency and proactivity, particularly with the new year in mind. Today’s powerpoint is intended for January 2026 delivery. It’s called - a little tongue-in-cheek, this title - The Double Your Luck Challenge.

We ask a very simple, amusing question, inspired by this post, (hat-tip to George Mack): what if you had to try and double your luck in 2026? It’s an interesting thought experiment. What kind of actions could you take? What kind of connections might you try and build? What networks could you join? What could you offer in order to promote positive relationships that pay you back?

In this powerpoint, we hear the story of one remarkable sixth former we’ve recently worked with (she made her own luck), and offer ten ways students might invite interesting opportunities into their lives…

Happy Friday!

Massive moment last week folks. Massive. Moment. We sent the newsletter out… and nobody unsubscribed. Not one person in nearly six thousand. Usually, the three hours it takes to put this together result in at least one person throwing themselves from the bus, often into oncoming traffic. Not last week though. Not last week.

OK, fingers on the unsubscribe button - here comes the stuff we thought might be useful to share this week!

Let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Dr Dominic Ng is a neuroscientist at Edinburgh University, and writes simply and persuasively in this piece about the tendency of the human brain to react emotionally - rather than practically or pragmatically - to challenge.

He discusses the kind of pushback we see students battle with all the time; ego protection and procrastination, and gives lots of clear examples that kids will immediately recognise. Then he suggests solutions. Very familiar solutions.

Our Ten Minute Rule, from The A Level Mindset, becomes the Two Minute Rule - a reflection perhaps on the erosion of attention since 2015, when we developed our version! 😂 Two minutes is too short, but he makes his point well. Our Mission and Medal, from The GCSE Mindset, becomes Reward Yourself. Our Inner Storytelling, from The A Level Mindset, becomes Pretend to be Someone You’re Not. And our Learner’s Manifesto from The Student Mindset becomes Be a Beginner.

In other words, a VESPA-endorsed article through-and-through. And of course, a good QTR (that’s Quick Tutorial Read). Enjoy!

How to Trick Your Brain into Doing Difficult Things

A Neuroscientist’s 7 Proven Ways to Get Yourself to Do What Matters

www.brainhealthdecoded.com/p/how-to-trick-your-brain-into-doing?r=8g7ur&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

And something for school and college leaders to study - we’ve enjoyed this two-pager on the characteristics of the best schools in Teach Secondary, trailing Mark and Zoe Enser’s new book. Zoom in!

Teach-Secondary-Issue-14.7: ‘Learn from the Best’

Zoom-in to read!

cdn.teachwire.net/e-mag/Teach-Secondary-Issue-14.7/22/?utm_source=Crown+House+Publishing+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1c5747f4fe-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_09_12_02_53_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-6cbf930940-295867225&mc_cid=1c5747f4fe&mc_eid=faf32f4e02

Something to try...

In The VESPA Handbook, there’s an activity we love called Catching Clarity. In it, we provide a system for ensuring students never fall behind, let complex concepts defeat them, or misunderstandings multiply.

Recently, a school asked Martin to record an introduction to successful study for their students, and Catching Clarity was one of the activities he chose. What you’re getting here are two things - the slides that Martin used, and a video of him delivering the slides.

Hopefully, this should be all you need to deliver it yourself should you wish…

Afternoon folks, and Happy Friday.

It’s starting to feel like this term might be defeat-able. There’s just a glimmer of a chance that it might actually end, and we might find ourselves crawling into Christmas, battered and bruised, but alive. Long live that feeling.

Right, listen, last week we did a piece on values, then later came across this wonderful observation about the connection between values and attention:

apols we haven’t figured out how to scale pictures yet

…this is huge. We don’t mean the relative size of the picture - which is a bit wrong, given the teeniness of the text we’re typing right now 😂The idea. The idea is hefty. People with no clear idea of their values are more likely to have their attention hijacked. Big thought, one to contemplate.

In the meantime, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

We’ve really enjoyed this. Writer Naomi Alderman on ‘seven things to tell your kids when they ask what the point of studying is’.

The focus is on AI disrupting the world of work, and young people’s feelings of nouveau nihilism. (Lovely phrase, by the way, taken from the Ipsos poll of young people around the world…)

hyperlinked pic if you want to read more…

If the poll is accurate, we’ve got over 60% of young people not planning for the future because it feels too uncertain. AI plays a role in that uncertainty, particularly if as teachers, we’re feeding it with off-the-cuff comments (“Guess that robots will be doing all that in the future!”) Studying might seem like a waste of time if all we hear is there won’t be any jobs.

So Alderman’s article is an antidote, good for a quick tutorial read. Dive in; there are seven cracking pieces of advice here. Stay positive!

preparing for the working world in the age of AI

or: seven things to tell your kids when they ask what they should study now, or what the point of studying is

naomialderman.substack.com/p/preparing-for-the-working-world-in

Portal Talk...

Turning “you need to work harder” into real coaching

Most of us have had that conversation with a student.

You’re up against a deadline, you’ve only got a couple of minutes, and the data you really need is buried in three different systems. So you fall back on the greatest hits:

• “You need to put more effort in.”

• “You need to plan better.”

• “You just need to revise more.”

We say these things with the best intentions – but they’re vague, a bit disempowering, and they don’t really help students build the metacognitive skills they need to change their behaviour long term.

At VESPA, we think those quick progress chats can become something much more powerful.

When tutors can see, at a glance, how a student is thinking about their work – their vision, effort, systems, practice and attitude – the conversation shifts. Instead of telling them what to do, we can start asking:

• What’s already working for you?

• Where are things breaking down?

• What change do you want to make this week?

That’s where metacognition grows: students reflecting on their habits, making choices, and owning their next steps.

Try our new Coaching Overview demo

We’ve built a short interactive demo to show how this can work inside the VESPA Portal.

The Coaching Overview lets tutors and progress coaches:

• See students’ VESPA questionnaire results and action plans on one screen

• Spot who needs a deeper conversation – and why

• Turn “work harder” into specific, student-owned actions

👉 You can launch the demo here:

VESPA Staff Overview - Interactive Demo

Transform Your Student Academic Conversations

💡 The Coaching Page brings all reports into one place so staff can spot patterns, target interventions, and track impact over time – without endless spreadsheet or data entry.

It only takes a minute to click around, and we’d love your feedback – especially on how useful this would be in real tutorial conversations.

If you’d like to talk through how it might work in your setting, just reply to this email or book a quick chat from the popup in the demo.

Something to try...

Now and again we’ll have a push on time and attention management with students - and December’s going to be our next one. We’ve chosen our model, an oldie but a goodie - Brian Tracey’s Eat the Frog approach. It’s light-touch and expressed in a suitably silly metaphor, but has something important to say about prioritisation, reactivity and stolen focus.

If you want to join us, we’ve got two things to help you do so. A video of Naomi Lidell introducing the concept, plus a handout with a transcript of Lidell’s intro, plus an activity for students to complete….

Happy Friday!

Quotation of the week. English clergyman William James Dawson makes an interesting point about money here:

Forgive the generic masculine pronoun, it’s olden-times innit.

This quote’s on our minds because we’ve found that some students’ dreaming-of-billions is becoming damaging to their wellbeing. They chase whatever shiny thing they’ve seen on social; fake people advertising fake lives that aren’t real and contribute nothing. Fantasies like that tend to discourage action in the present moment by making the outcomes seem impossible, and students default to pipe-dreams and bitterness.

We can’t have that. A better approach might be - “OK, forget about money for now. That’ll come eventually. Ask yourself instead - what is it that I can offer? What problems do I see in the world around me? What can I do to help? We need to switch around the question so it’s ‘what can I help make or produce that’s of value?’ rather than, ‘what can I dream of mindlessly consuming?’”

OK, moralising over. Lots to share this week - and a theme to connect everything - so let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

Students with higher levels of engagement, happiness, curiosity or optimism, usually have a stronger sense of what their values are. In this piece, Psychologist Nick Wignall suggests we regularly assess our own values, and try and act in accordance with them. He has a downloadable resource with 130 values listed, and an activity in which he asks us to consider our top 10 or 20 values from the list.

We’ve sat down and tried the activity. It was good - interesting and helpful. We started out with a long-list of maybe 35 values, then whittled them down, discussing why we were combining similar values to make room for more, or cutting some from the list. It took us twenty or thirty minutes in total, so it’d make a decent tutorial activity.

You can find the blog post here:

How to Clarify Your Values

Do you want to know your values better? This guide will explain what personal values are, why they are important, and how to discover them.

nickwignall.com/know-your-values

And the values document here:

Values-Discovery-Tool-Kit.pdf

drive.google.com/file/d/1adrzyYyO18j5Lv9QKnrJ9ifqvQMez5y4/view?usp=sharing

And Wignall’s other short articles have been useful too. This one caught our eye, and might yours too:

10 Self-Coaching Questions to Get Unstuck - Nick Wignall

Psychologist and mindset coach Nick Wignall shares 10 of his favorite self-coaching questions to help you get unstuck

nickwignall.com/self-coaching-questions/?utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10+self-coaching+question+-+19322383

Something to try...

Sometimes it’s hard to get students to commit to studying something they can’t see the value of. How many times have you heard, “What’s the point in this subject? I’ll never use it in real life”?

A utility value intervention is an intervention that encourages students to explore the purpose of the subject they’re studying. A terrific study that we’ve shared before shows how students can become more engaged, determined and persistent once they realise the value of a subject.

Today’s powerpoint takes students through the study…

Happy Friday!

We’re back at it and raring to go. Lots to share this week, so let’s just dive straight in…

Something we're reading...

Now, we’ve promised you a number of times - and we’ll do it again right now - that we have never, ever used AI to help us write The Friday Mindset. It’s 100% from our own heads, 100% hand-typed, and 100% shonky-as-hell as a result. (Our jokes are so bad we’ve had actual complaints and had to stop messing about so much.)

But AI is nevertheless very much part of all education-conversations at the moment, so we thought we’d share three - that’s THREE, folks! - interesting pieces we’ve recently read…

We’ll start with a clever, insightful piece written by Naomi Alderman (British author of The Power and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.)

She’s subscribed to a newsletter about ADHD. It’s obviously (like soooo many of them) a ChatGTP job - even apart from the dreary AI-generated art she can absolutely tell. In the article below she makes regular reference to the newsletter, and quotes from the ‘Autumn Reset’ section. “Write a one-line vision for September-December,” the newsletter advises, adding, “keep it where your eyes land daily.”

Wait, what? Keep it where your eyes land daily? No-one uses language like that.

Alderman goes on to outline seven characteristics of AI writing. It’s a good quick tutorial read (QTR, remember?) and it might help dissuade students from cutting corners or outsourcing thinking. Here it is:

Is it written by AI? seven ways to tell

and why it matters

naomialderman.substack.com/p/is-it-written-by-ai-seven-ways-to?r=8g7ur&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

…and if you haven’t got time for the main piece and fancy a shorter, simpler, homework-focused article on how to spot AI use in your students, here’s Adam Boxer covering some of the basics for you:

Carousel: Can Teachers Spot AI-use in Homework?

www.carousel-learning.com/resources/blog/can-teachers-spot-ai-in-carousel-homework?utm_source=news.teacherprompts.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=who-moderaites-the-moderaitor&_bhlid=68706edb26969b0764b5dbeff24156eddf1eae56

(Of course, we’ve heard of students adding the prompt: ‘remove all characteristics of AI writing, and include spelling errors typical of a 16 year old teenager in the UK’ so the quicker solution is to just set work that can’t be completed using LLMs…)

Next. Martin attends a writing group near where he lives. Once a week, everyone meets to read what they’ve been working on. There’s much panic and dismay about AI amongst members, mostly because they’ve read ‘it’s coming for your job’ fear-mongering in the press. We shouldn’t be perpetuating black-and-white polemics like this with students.

If you want a more balanced and nuanced view of the current scene - and a stronger sense of why we’re on the cusp of a bubble bursting, try the following.

Here’s NYU professor, writer and neuroscientist Gary Marcus sharing five signs generative AI-use is tailing off:

Five signs that Generative AI is losing traction

Usage may be declining, just as scaling “laws” seem to be losing steam

garymarcus.substack.com/p/five-signs-that-generative-ai-is?r=8g7ur&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

And as if that isn’t enough, subscribers, you have a fourth article to check through too - coming up.

Something to try...

We’ve run a session with students a number of times called Above the Line, Below the Line. It’s a vision session designed to get them thinking about the jobs, careers and opportunities that exist in different sectors.

Many students think quickly of ‘above the line’ jobs. For example, if the sector is healthcare, the student might list ‘doctor’, ‘nurse’…. then run out of steam. But there are scores of others - slightly less visible ‘below the line’ options they could be getting excited about.

Realising these options exist has made a big difference to students. In this week’s powerpoint, we take you through a load of examples…

Happy Friday!

Another half-term’s worth of newsletters done.

Many thanks to the thousands of you who open and read every Friday. It means a lot!

And a huge woop-woop to our group of full subscribers. A small but brave band of warriors. You’re legends, folks, we couldn’t do it without you. (Quite literally, you’re keeping the whole project going 👏👏👏👏)

OK, one more issue to go before our two-week break from writing. Let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

Homework.

Yeah, it’s a topic on our minds. Recently we’ve been working with some schools - in admittedly difficult contexts and circumstances - who tell us they’ve virtually given up setting homework. The battle is lost, no-one does it anyway, what’s the point. We began wondering how much of a learning deficit might be building up in these contexts.

So this is a very interesting piece about homework, featuring a series of papers and six major conclusions. It largely concentrates on US schools and therefore uses the US grade-system, (so add a year) and looks at the impact homework has on primary and secondary school pupils, drawing some really interesting conclusions.

A few that caught our attention:

• Homework has a greater and greater impact as the pupil gets older - as long as it’s purposeful.

• Reading and writing practice beats endless drills, particularly for younger kids.

• High quality homework has a positive impact on behavioural engagement, but poor homework does the opposite…

The picture’s hyperlinked and will take you to the piece. It’s really good stuff!

A must-read

Portal Talk 101... over to Tony!

Last week I did a big re-introduction of the questionnaire and the reports it can generate. What I didn’t cover, was the access to the resources you also get when your students do the questionnaire.

Sign your students up to the questionnaire, and you get 120 powerpoints. That’s one powerpoint for every activity Steve and Martin have ever published (40 in The A Level Mindset, another 40 in The GCSE Mindset and a further 40 in The VESPA Handbook.)

Let’s have a closer look…

^{VESPA Activities}

In total Martin and Steve have created over 120 activities - that’s 24 for each of the 5 VESPA themes. Imagine having 24 vision activities, or 24 ideas to turn to if you want to raise levels of effort, or project management, or effective revision… Well, you don’t have to imagine; we’ve translated every activity into an online resource that can be completed independently by the student, without the requirement for workbooks or printing:

Our new VESPA Activities section has been transformed into an interactive, student led page, designed to encourage students to complete these with growing independence.

Students are still recommended up to 10 activities based on their VESPA Scores, however they can also choose to select their own, based on different “Study Problems” they might be encountering, for example, "I get distracted really easily when I try to study" or "I'm not very organised with my notes and deadlines".

We’re really proud of what we’ve created, so would love to show you more! After half term, I will be going through the new Tutor Pages and how these are being used across the UK and Internationally to enhance student conversations.

As ever, book in a meeting with me if you’d like to know more…

Something to try...

We’ve talked a lot about episodic future thinking on this newsletter. When schools or colleges complain their students aren’t aspirational enough, we regularly find that there are insufficient examples or models for the learners to lock onto.

• High schools who want their students to aspire to A Level study at a local sixth form… but the only contact the students have with the college is a once-a-year post-16 study event. (Miss it, and you’re knackered.)

• Or post-16 organisations that want a greater degree of aspiration from their students - who seem listlessly lacking agency - but the only example the students have seen of university life is a one-off lecture by a visiting speaker towards the end of year 12 and a dog-eared display board.

If students are to build compelling, exciting cognitive maps of the future, they need an example-rich environment. And this week’s powerpoint is going to help you get started…

Happy Friday!

Where has this term gone? We’ve got one more newsletter after this one, and then we’re taking our customary break for half term. Plenty to share this week and next, though, and looking ahead to our week off, it might be a good time to share three things we’re geeking-out about at the moment:

If you want a fascinating and energising half-term read, buy Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, which we’ve really loved. Week-by-week advice for improving your life, full of ideas for helping students. Order it now!

If you want an interesting chat, we’d recommend Dr Alok Kanojia’s discussion of motivation on Mel Robbins’ podcast. Start at 37:40 for some interesting insights.

If you just want to chill the hell out, we’ve been getting zen to a Spotify playlist called Sleepy Fire and Rain Sounds, but since we can’t link to it here, there’s a Youtube equivalent for you. Very Autumnal, strangely state-altering.

As for right here, right now - let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This has been a really interesting opinion piece to dig into.

The background story is this - there’s a town in West Virginia located next to a massive and super-sensitive radio telescope. To preserve the signal, no-one in town can have wi-fi, including the local school, where classes are taught without chromebooks, google docs, or online learning materials (except where, in a small number of classrooms, LAN cables can be used.)

And the school posts the lowest test scores in the county. The initial conclusion? Tech like this helps learners, and these kids are missing out.

But Cal Newport has a different take. The piece is fascinating, as are the comments below, so brew up, steal a bunch of Bourbon Creams from the boardroom, get in and give it the once-over…

Does WiFi Make Students Smarter? - Cal Newport

At a time when educators are increasingly concerned about technology’s impact in the classroom, the Washington Post published ​an op-ed​ with a contrarian tone. The ... Read more

calnewport.com/does-wifi-make-students-smarter

Portal Talk 101… over to Tony

We’ve been sharing our new reports recently, so I though I’d take this opportunity to explain a bit about the ideas that went into the new build online portal and, like a proud Father, share some screenshots from the upgrade!

We’ve never wanted to claim that an online portal will solve all your problems! …but we believe that the most effective way to change behaviour is to leverage the relationships you have with your students. The portal is simply a tool to allow you to do this. So here’s Part One of our tour. I’ll show you the homepage, questionnaire and student reports.

Feast your eyes!

Redesigned Homepage

The Student homepage can now show student academic subjects and targets, alongside the VESPA scores. Taster activities, which change when the page loads, show above the original VESPA Hub - Containing the VESPA Questionnaire, Coaching Report and Student Activities, and the PRODUCTIVITY HUB - useful tools for students, including a study planner and an AI driven Flashcard app, which allows students to create and study flashcards using spaced repetition:

^{VESPA Questionnaire}

The VESPA Questionnaire of course forms the cornerstone of the platform. Students complete this 3 times per year, each time getting a coaching report, which is available to both students and staff:

The 5-pt Likert scale responses are translated into a score out of 10, using percentiles to calculate where each score boundary should lie, (using around 30,000 data points, i.e. all students who have completed the questionnaire in the current academic year.)

We’ve upgraded the VESPA Report this year, making it mobile friendly and improving the student comment areas. Arguably the most important elements of the report, these are where students are asked to reflect on their scores and provide a response. This is pure gold for coaching conversations, providing deeper insights into the student mindset. We have added guides to help students respond effectively and also to set effective goals.

Next week, we’ll go deeper and share some of the activities available!

If you would like to book a demo or just ask a few questions - please use my link below to connect. I’ll get back to you!

Portal Demo - Tony Dennis

Select this option for a short 15min meeting to discuss questions you might have about the VESA Portal, or student psychometric

calendly.com/vespaacademy/15minmeeting

Something to try...

Parks and Recreation. Brooklyn 99. The Good Place. A Man on the Inside. What have these wonderful TV comedies got in common?

The answer is Michael Schur - a superb show-creator and comedy writer. In this week’s powerpoint, we’re sharing Four Lessons from Michael Schur, taken from a wide-ranging and brutally honest TV interview in which he describes the difficulties he faced when he first started trying to write sketches.

There’s so much transferable advice in these clips…

Happy Friday!

Been thinking a lot this week about Times journalist James Marriott’s extensively-shared essay, The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society. Man it’s a bleak read - but a very familiar one if you’ve been dipping in and out of our stuff over the last year, since we’ve been covering adjacent ideas.

Anyway, it’s essential reading for every teacher, but not right now, OK? It’s the start of the weekend and we need some feeling of possibility. Thankfully we’ve got you covered - a paper that emphasises the importance of non-cognitive skills, a podcast chat, a VESPA report, and - ahem - an excellent powerpoint and twenty killer coaching questions for subscribers!

Let’s dive in folks.

Something we're reading...

This article explores research produced jointly by Queen Mary and King’s College London, among a load of others, and came out last summer. Don’t know how we missed it but there you go. It looks right up our street, of course, but there’s something else of interest going on in the piece - the researchers suggest there’s a genetic component to non-cognitive skills, just like there is for cognition, and certain students might be pre-disposed towards grit or academic interest, for example.

And these pre-dispositions may create feedback loops that strengthen particular non-cognitive skills. Of course, they’re still malleable - that’s important to bear in mind. "Our education system has traditionally focused on cognitive development," the writer of the study concludes. "It's time to rebalance that focus and give equal importance to nurturing non-cognitive skills. By doing so, we can create a more inclusive and effective learning environment for all students."

If you need to start a conversation, spark some thinking, or you fancy checking out the full paper, it’s an interesting read.

Non-cognitive skills: the hidden key to academic success

www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/se/non-cognitive-skills-the-hidden-key-to-academic-success.html

And one more thing while we’re on the subject of reading/listening: Martin and his co-writer Dr Jo Phillips spoke to the Careers Podcast about their new book The Backpacker’s Guide to University. It’s a really interesting half-hour conversation, and gives a flavour of the book’s content and advice. Good for year 13s…

The Careers Podcast

Careers Podcast · Updated Semi-weekly · Silje Howes from LMI UK and presenter John Rose have a wholly unique format for careers information and guidance.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-careers-podcast/id1569838172

Portal Talk...

We jumped on a Teams call to chat through another VESPA report for you. This one’s interesting…

Zoom in for a closer look!

Steve: Worth sharing a quote from the student’s comment - ‘these past few weeks I’ve been struggling with how to begin my studies’. That might be a place to start here, don’t you think?

Martin: I use the phrase ‘activation energy’ to describe that impetus you need to begin. It can be a sticking point for year 12s, can’t it.

Tony: Yeah, if you’re a perfectionist, you might not want to start at all. Particularly if your grades up to now have been superb - that first piece of work at the next level is a threat to your track record.

Steve: So we’re going to start with the attitude score - that’s what we’re talking about here isn’t it? I’d dig into that, find out what the student’s thinking is.

Something to try...

Another powerpoint for you today. This is an epic one - took us flippin’ ages - about the dangers of excessive social media use. Our guide is, of course, Professor Cal Newport (Computer Science and Digital Ethics, Georgetown University) who always speaks with such clarity and expertise on the subject.

Here he takes us through how and why social media platforms lead to isolation, exposure to conspiracy theories, and the development of extreme views. It’s a very important topic, one that needs properly exploring with students at key stage 4 and 5…

Happy Monday, folks.

It seems there might have been a technical error this week so here’s your newsletter again you wonderful people. OK. From the top…

If anyone caught the Manchester derby last weekend, you’ll know Autumn has well and truly arrived. The match was played a stone’s throw from where we’re typing this - assuming you can throw a stone about a mile-and-a-half - and it was absolutely tanking it. Today though, the sun’s out, the sky’s blue and the leaves are on the turn.

Love this time of year apart from the rain. (We did a session with a school in Hong Kong this week, and all the staff and kids were working from home whilst awaiting the arrival of a typhoon… so everything’s relative we guess.)

OK, weather-related small-talk complete. Let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

Regular readers will know we’re a sucker for lists of lessons. Anytime someone wise shares a ‘100 things I wish I’d known…’ we’re on it. Not because we need it ourselves - though sometimes we do - but mostly because we think: this could be good for the students. We could discuss and reflect on these. They could generate their own list.

So it is with this week’s piece. This week’s contributor is journalist, writer and chess obsessive Sasha Chapin. We picked this one because he’s got a handle on what’s it feels like to be genuinely good at something. This one really struck us:

_{“Talent doesn’t feel like you’re amazing. It feels like the difficulties that trouble others are mysteriously absent in your case. Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.”}

Yeah, that’s neat. The full 50 are right here:

50 things I know

...

sashachapin.substack.com/p/50-things-i-know

But we’re gonna remove a few - a recipe for cabbage (!), some grown-up, existential observations that might not strike the right note in a tutorial session, etc. So our shorter list of 30 is here. There are all clean, relevant, and interesting. You could ask students to choose a number between 1 and 30… and discuss the random advice that emerges:

Sasha Chapin - 30 lessons.docx

Sasha Chapin, journalist, writer and chess-obsessive, shares 30 life lessons he’s learnt… I know what makes people grow more reliably than anything else. It is: taking on a difficult project with some amount of public accountability. This can be large or small: a lecture series, a business, a bl...

docs.google.com/document/d/1eaPTTU-YFchKgqxn1KybKeUoPL-n4G7k/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108687943301345498138&rtpof=true&sd=true

Portal Talk…

The three of us sat down to leaf through another VESPA questionnaire report. This one caught our eye…

Zoom in for a closer look…

Steve: Look at that Attitude score. This is a confident person!

Tony: When I’m talking to students whose Attitude score is their highest - especially when it’s way higher like this - I often try and tease out whether they’re really scoring themselves accurately or whether they’re not being entirely honest.

Steve: Whether they’re deluding themselves?

Tony: Yes, I suppose!

Martin: I’d be interested in asking whether they agreed with their scores in the other elements. I like asking, “If you were in charge of scoring yourself, what numbers would you assign?”

Steve: Yes. Then we can see if there’s a difference, and explore why the students chose the numbers they did. It often reveals a lot about their perceptions of things.

Something to try...

Another thing we’re always on the lookout for - interesting people telling stories about how they proactively achieved something remarkable.

And this powerpoint’s a vivid and inspiring case in point. Comedian James Acaster tells the story of what he was up to at the age of 17 and 18. Clue: he wasn’t sitting on his arse waiting for something to happen. He wasn’t waiting to be picked. He was what we’re calling ‘actively seeking’…

We’ve structured the powerpoint in the form of four lessons - a bit like our first attempt at this, Four Lessons: The Duffer Brothers from way back - and there’s an audio clip at the bottom of each lesson which clicks in sequence, so you can listen to Acaster in his own words.

Terrific stuff, we really enjoyed this one.

Four lessons - James Acaster.pptx

4 lessons: James Acaster copyright Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin info@vespa.academy

docs.google.com/presentation/d/1XgsAtpY9YTIvnJJyWdg4nw8Iv2Tg864G/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108687943301345498138&rtpof=true&sd=true

Our latest offer...

Ever get bored of introducing the idea of VESPA?

We’ve got you covered. We’ve been working with an Australian school, who asked for a two-minute introduction to the model that they could share with parents. So we jumped to it. Here’s a quickly-recorded introduction from Martin.

You might want to use it if you’re sharing the concept with parents, staff or students, embedding it into a larger presentation. Whatever. Hope it’s useful!

Martin Introduces VESPA in 2 minutes.mp4

drive.google.com/file/d/100A66sHqJ4XW-SBiyaavNTS6MnXUdW4H/view?usp=sharing

And that’s it for this week, folks. Many thanks to all of you reading this sentence right now - it means you’re one of our modest crew of superstar subscribers that make this work possible. Hassle us, ask questions, prod us for materials or support - we know who subscribes and we’ll fast-track you!

Right, let’s get out there and enjoy a beautiful autumn weekend. Take an umbrella.

All the best to you and yours,

Martin, Steve and Tony

p.s. We’re often impressed by the calming wisdom of Ewan McIntosh. Here’s an extract from one of his recent emails, looking at environment design and student behaviour:

Simple but effective…