6 March 2024
Singer Rihanna’s biography was among the topics Year 10 – and many parents – looked at in a workshop on Monday 4 March designed to help our students work smarter rather than harder.
The highly interactive session was led by Steve Beckles-Ebusua, aka ‘The Speaker with the Orange Tie’, who shared a wide range of techniques students can use to aid their studies and revision. These included the ’30-10 rule’, involving tackling a pre-planned list of practical tasks (such as bedroom tidying or mending a bike) for 10 minutes between each half hour period of study; and ‘life-mapping’ to memorise a piece of text by splitting it up into theme/main idea/details (the technique involving Rihanna that could as easily be applied to Henry VIII).
Steve also looked at how beliefs (such as “I’m no good at maths”) are often the foundation for stress and explored ways to overcome them by looking at things in a different way.
With new techniques in their toolkit, Year 10 can practice these in preparation for their upcoming exams, finding out which work best for them ahead of their GCSEs next year and A Levels two years later.