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!
