This newsletter was first published on 17th February
Over the last few months, The Thinking Consultancy have helped a number of teenagers improve their chances of academic success – regardless of their interests and regardless of the subjects they are studying. You may remember our previous newsletters about Aaron and Jasmine and I am pleased to report that both Aaron and Jasmine have done well in their mocks. They are thrilled, so are their parents and so am I!
As I write, many teenagers will be completing their mock exams and, with positive results in the bag, look towards to the ‘real thing’ in the summer. But what happens if the mocks are a mockery and do not produce the anticipated results? Will the confidence shattering experience knock your teenagers totally off course? Will it be that necessary jolt for them that you, as a parent, think they’ve needed all along? Or will you end up standing by helpless when they don’t feel they’re good enough and want to give up altogether?
How is success achieved? At The Thinking Consultancy, we ensure teenagers don’t fall at the first hurdle of examinations. We ensure they do well at their GCSEs and have the confidence to move forward to the next stage. How do we do this?
We do this through teaching study skills which encompass learning, thinking and memory skills. By working alongside teenagers, we teach valuable techniques such as mind mapping, exam strategies and methods of placing information into memory and methods of taking the information out again. (Mind Mapping is a Trade Mark owned by Tony Buzan)
We’ve had excellent results and testimonials from teenagers and from parents. Sometimes teenagers come back to us to support them with wider volumes of material for A Levels and degrees.
With half term upon us, and Easter not far away, this could be the ideal time to prepare and pull it all together before ‘the real thing’ in the summer.
Most sessions we run are for between two to three hours and will have clear results at the end. Teenagers and parents often feel comfortable if the sessions are held at home, so we can see the results together.
To discuss how I can help you, please call me directly.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Skills to pass GCSEs– Jasmine’s story
This newsletter was first published on the 3rd March
“I did not know that I knew so much!”
15 years old Jasmine
“I was amazed at how quickly Jasmine benefited from these new methods of learning”
Una, Jasmine’s mother
One of my previous newsletters detailed the progress that my student Aaron gained from a few hours personal tuition generated a lot of responses and interest from you.
So, in this newsletter, I would like to tell you about Jasmine – another student I have recently trained.
Jasmine is 15 years old young lady living with her family. Her parents come from Sub Sarah Africa and both Jasmine’s parents are doctors. So it’s not surprising that Jasmine wants to follow in their footsteps and join the medical profession.
This year, Jasmine’s needs to get excellent GCSE results, which are essential to take her forward into 6th form college and beyond. We put a three-tier plan together to help Jasmine plan for these including – Cognitive mind mapping tuition, Memory skills tuition and Future pacing.
Cognitive mind mapping tuition
To begin the tuition, working with Jasmine and her mother, we spent an hour or so on cognitive mind mapping. I then asked Jasmine to, on her own, to draw a mind map of her favourite subject at school. She chose Chemistry.
Without stopping, Jasmine filled a sheet of A3 paper with a multi-coloured array of words, symbols, expressions and diagrams. I gave Jasmine a timeframe of 15 minutes and then asked her to tell her mother and me what she had put down on paper.
Jasmine’s mother and I were both impressed on the quality and quantity of the content. More importantly, Jasmine could not believe she had put so much knowledge about Chemistry down in such a short time.
We then looked at exam techniques and how she could use mind mapping. I asked Jasmine to read and understand the exam question and then to mind map everything she knew about the subject with respect to the question, but to limit herself to no more than 5 minutes. Then, from the mind map, I asked her to write up her answer and use it as a crib sheet. Success!
This is an important exam skill for Jasmine to learn.
Additionally I told her to hand in her mind map with her answers. As a working document Jasmine will get additional marks for her mind map as it forms part of her answer paper.
Mind Mapping is a trade mark owned by Tony Buzan
Memory skills tuition
Moving onto memory skills, I then showed Jasmine techniques for remembering lists, important people and processes. For one exercise I asked Jasmine to read and then recall all the UK Prime Ministers since 1939.
Jasmine’s task was to remember all of them, in the right sequence and noting which Prime Ministers were re-elected.
Jasmine took just 10 minutes and recalled all the names correctly.
There were 14 Prime Ministers with two defeated and then re- elected.
Future pacing
Before leaving we looked at Jasmine’s career choice to see whether it fits in with her skill set and her personality.
In my experience, some students follow a parent’s career path without working through that it is something they really want to do. I have worked with a number of clients who followed a parent’s footsteps only to regret the career choice later in life.
With Jasmine there was no doubt that medicine was for her. The real dilemma was should Jasmine continue to study here in the UK and have to wait another 10 years of so before being qualified, or could she return to her parents home country and be qualified in half the time?
I did some Future Pacing with Jasmine and working through this, she decided that staying in the UK was the best option – with her new skills her sights are now on Cambridge University!
I always find it amazing that we achieve so much in personal tuition in such a reasonably short space of time. Well done to Jasmine, to Aaron and to all of the teenagers I have worked with – all of whom have produced excellent results and have concrete plans for the future. It is always rewarding to work with teenagers.
If you have a teenager who would benefit from a few hours intensive tuition then please call. Travelling is not a problem for us and it is always better to work from the clients’ home as teenagers will then feel more comfortable and relaxed.
Of course more mature students are always invited to contact me too!
“I did not know that I knew so much!”
15 years old Jasmine
“I was amazed at how quickly Jasmine benefited from these new methods of learning”
Una, Jasmine’s mother
One of my previous newsletters detailed the progress that my student Aaron gained from a few hours personal tuition generated a lot of responses and interest from you.
So, in this newsletter, I would like to tell you about Jasmine – another student I have recently trained.
Jasmine is 15 years old young lady living with her family. Her parents come from Sub Sarah Africa and both Jasmine’s parents are doctors. So it’s not surprising that Jasmine wants to follow in their footsteps and join the medical profession.
This year, Jasmine’s needs to get excellent GCSE results, which are essential to take her forward into 6th form college and beyond. We put a three-tier plan together to help Jasmine plan for these including – Cognitive mind mapping tuition, Memory skills tuition and Future pacing.
Cognitive mind mapping tuition
To begin the tuition, working with Jasmine and her mother, we spent an hour or so on cognitive mind mapping. I then asked Jasmine to, on her own, to draw a mind map of her favourite subject at school. She chose Chemistry.
Without stopping, Jasmine filled a sheet of A3 paper with a multi-coloured array of words, symbols, expressions and diagrams. I gave Jasmine a timeframe of 15 minutes and then asked her to tell her mother and me what she had put down on paper.
Jasmine’s mother and I were both impressed on the quality and quantity of the content. More importantly, Jasmine could not believe she had put so much knowledge about Chemistry down in such a short time.
We then looked at exam techniques and how she could use mind mapping. I asked Jasmine to read and understand the exam question and then to mind map everything she knew about the subject with respect to the question, but to limit herself to no more than 5 minutes. Then, from the mind map, I asked her to write up her answer and use it as a crib sheet. Success!
This is an important exam skill for Jasmine to learn.
Additionally I told her to hand in her mind map with her answers. As a working document Jasmine will get additional marks for her mind map as it forms part of her answer paper.
Mind Mapping is a trade mark owned by Tony Buzan
Memory skills tuition
Moving onto memory skills, I then showed Jasmine techniques for remembering lists, important people and processes. For one exercise I asked Jasmine to read and then recall all the UK Prime Ministers since 1939.
Jasmine’s task was to remember all of them, in the right sequence and noting which Prime Ministers were re-elected.
Jasmine took just 10 minutes and recalled all the names correctly.
There were 14 Prime Ministers with two defeated and then re- elected.
Future pacing
Before leaving we looked at Jasmine’s career choice to see whether it fits in with her skill set and her personality.
In my experience, some students follow a parent’s career path without working through that it is something they really want to do. I have worked with a number of clients who followed a parent’s footsteps only to regret the career choice later in life.
With Jasmine there was no doubt that medicine was for her. The real dilemma was should Jasmine continue to study here in the UK and have to wait another 10 years of so before being qualified, or could she return to her parents home country and be qualified in half the time?
I did some Future Pacing with Jasmine and working through this, she decided that staying in the UK was the best option – with her new skills her sights are now on Cambridge University!
I always find it amazing that we achieve so much in personal tuition in such a reasonably short space of time. Well done to Jasmine, to Aaron and to all of the teenagers I have worked with – all of whom have produced excellent results and have concrete plans for the future. It is always rewarding to work with teenagers.
If you have a teenager who would benefit from a few hours intensive tuition then please call. Travelling is not a problem for us and it is always better to work from the clients’ home as teenagers will then feel more comfortable and relaxed.
Of course more mature students are always invited to contact me too!
Who wants to be a millionaire?
First published 17th January 2011
Happy New Year and I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas. How did you get on with The Thinking Consultancy’s Christmas quiz and are you thinking about going on Who wants to be a millionaire this year?!
If you’re like most of the people who received the quiz you probably got 50 - 60% right on your first attempt. However, when you returned and tried again these subsequent visits saw you getting 90 - 95% correct.
What’s interesting is that out of the 100 questions asked you knew the answer to nearly all of them, but you could not recall them when first asked! How many times did you look up the answer and say out loud “I knew that!” So - to use an expression used on our reading and memory courses -“You knew it but did not know that you knew it!”
This statement is a true reflection of what happens and often we get frustrated that we haven’t recalled something especially if we are studying for examinations or we are striving for excellence in our jobs where we have to recall significant amounts of information. How can we acquire, manage and retrieve information? The key is:
1 Learn what you need to learn
2 Have a strategy for memorising information
3 Trust your memory
Learn what you need to learn
In business you acquire most critical information from what you read. Other information is mostly supportive. If, when you are reading documents you give as much attention to information of low importance to that of high importance, you are simply wasting time. There are 5 categories of information that are critical:
1 Information that directly affects you
2 Information that directly affects your boss
3 Information that directly affects your staff
4 Information that directly affects your team
5 Information that directly affects your department
Information you come across outside any of the above may be interesting but it’s only of use to you if it gives you a political advantage within your company.
Have a strategy for memorising information
There are as many strategies for remembering as there are people who need to remember - unfortunately they are not all reliable. A simple example is spelling.
Good spellers store a picture of the word and then, when needed, visualise the word and pick off the letters one at a time. Did you know that visual spellers can also spell words backwards!
Auditory spellers spell the word as they hear it but that does not always work. For example, expenses or expences, consider or concider? All sound correct, but the second spelling in each example is wrong. And auditory spellers rely on hearing the word and, as they cannot see it, they cannot spell it backwards.
When we work with teenagers we teach, where necessary, the NLP Spelling Strategy. They are, perhaps understandably, completely dumbfounded when have them spell complex words, both correctly and backwards. Try spelling incomprehensible or dyslexia backwards!
Note taking, especially Mind Mapping, are excellent aids for improving your memory. There are other techniques, including Image Streaming and ‘eye accessing cues’ from NLP that we cover on our memory and reading programme. My favourite though is where I would get you to recall the Morse Code in less than 60 minutes! (Mind Mapping is a trade Mark owned by Tony Buzan)
Trust your memory
In Who Wants to be a Millionaire a contestant, who is already in line to win a large sum of money, often gets stuck on a question. Then, after some deliberation, they decide to stop and take the money.
Before handing over the cheque, Chris Tarrant asks what their answer would have been. Have you noticed how often the contestants are told that if they had given that as their answer, they would have doubled their money? They knew the answer but did not trust their memory.
Those who are successful in life trust their memory and if you think about it why shouldn’t they?!
On our Quantum ReadingÔ programmes we devote lot of time convincing clients, or should I say letting clients convince themselves, of the quality and reliability of their memory. After all we are all born with a perfect memory!
Normal, healthy people ‘forget’ because:
1. forgetting is a convenient life strategy
2. they had not remembered it in the first place
3. they do not have a strategy for recalling what they have remembered
If you would like to trust your memory, and get 100% in this year’s quiz, please contact me!
Happy New Year and I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas. How did you get on with The Thinking Consultancy’s Christmas quiz and are you thinking about going on Who wants to be a millionaire this year?!
If you’re like most of the people who received the quiz you probably got 50 - 60% right on your first attempt. However, when you returned and tried again these subsequent visits saw you getting 90 - 95% correct.
What’s interesting is that out of the 100 questions asked you knew the answer to nearly all of them, but you could not recall them when first asked! How many times did you look up the answer and say out loud “I knew that!” So - to use an expression used on our reading and memory courses -“You knew it but did not know that you knew it!”
This statement is a true reflection of what happens and often we get frustrated that we haven’t recalled something especially if we are studying for examinations or we are striving for excellence in our jobs where we have to recall significant amounts of information. How can we acquire, manage and retrieve information? The key is:
1 Learn what you need to learn
2 Have a strategy for memorising information
3 Trust your memory
Learn what you need to learn
In business you acquire most critical information from what you read. Other information is mostly supportive. If, when you are reading documents you give as much attention to information of low importance to that of high importance, you are simply wasting time. There are 5 categories of information that are critical:
1 Information that directly affects you
2 Information that directly affects your boss
3 Information that directly affects your staff
4 Information that directly affects your team
5 Information that directly affects your department
Information you come across outside any of the above may be interesting but it’s only of use to you if it gives you a political advantage within your company.
Have a strategy for memorising information
There are as many strategies for remembering as there are people who need to remember - unfortunately they are not all reliable. A simple example is spelling.
Good spellers store a picture of the word and then, when needed, visualise the word and pick off the letters one at a time. Did you know that visual spellers can also spell words backwards!
Auditory spellers spell the word as they hear it but that does not always work. For example, expenses or expences, consider or concider? All sound correct, but the second spelling in each example is wrong. And auditory spellers rely on hearing the word and, as they cannot see it, they cannot spell it backwards.
When we work with teenagers we teach, where necessary, the NLP Spelling Strategy. They are, perhaps understandably, completely dumbfounded when have them spell complex words, both correctly and backwards. Try spelling incomprehensible or dyslexia backwards!
Note taking, especially Mind Mapping, are excellent aids for improving your memory. There are other techniques, including Image Streaming and ‘eye accessing cues’ from NLP that we cover on our memory and reading programme. My favourite though is where I would get you to recall the Morse Code in less than 60 minutes! (Mind Mapping is a trade Mark owned by Tony Buzan)
Trust your memory
In Who Wants to be a Millionaire a contestant, who is already in line to win a large sum of money, often gets stuck on a question. Then, after some deliberation, they decide to stop and take the money.
Before handing over the cheque, Chris Tarrant asks what their answer would have been. Have you noticed how often the contestants are told that if they had given that as their answer, they would have doubled their money? They knew the answer but did not trust their memory.
Those who are successful in life trust their memory and if you think about it why shouldn’t they?!
On our Quantum ReadingÔ programmes we devote lot of time convincing clients, or should I say letting clients convince themselves, of the quality and reliability of their memory. After all we are all born with a perfect memory!
Normal, healthy people ‘forget’ because:
1. forgetting is a convenient life strategy
2. they had not remembered it in the first place
3. they do not have a strategy for recalling what they have remembered
If you would like to trust your memory, and get 100% in this year’s quiz, please contact me!
