Grade Transformation Blog

Grade Transformation Blog

No.1 in Transforming Students’ Grades

Archive for October 2021

Why even top students sometimes procrastinate (and how to overcome it)

Even top-performing students still procrastinate.

And it’s not down to a lack of motivation.

This Y11 ATAR student is currently getting in the 70%’s
for English and is working on achieving her goal of high 80’s.

One of her struggles this week was getting an independent reading and summarising task ‘done’.
She’s not lazy and she wants great results.
So motivation’s not the issue (and therefore also won’t fix it).

Watch us unpick what’s stopping her from getting going,
and transform the task from vague and intangible to specific and actionable.

P.S. Sometimes procrastination sneaks in as ‘productive procrastination’, like
– doing more research (rather than actually starting the assignment)
or
– filing notes (instead of processing those notes)

The result is actually worse than spending that time scrolling through Insta or watching Netflix.
The task still isn’t done and they’ve spent hours ‘studying’ rather than getting some free time.

Use the questions I asked her with your teen next time they aren’t getting a task done and feel like they don’t really know why.

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Want better time management? Use ‘Outcome Scheduling’.

Wish your teen had better time management skills?

Well, I hate to break it to you, but
(unless you’ve got a time machine – in which case – can I come?!)
we can’t actually manage time itself.

All we can do is manage what we DO, in the time we have.

Plus, what does time management really mean?

Getting more done??
More what?… Insta-scrolling?

Or maybe, being more efficient?
Sounds good.

HOW?

(You know I love the HOW!)

The solution is ‘Outcome Scheduling’:

 

 

 

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Writing clear, high-quality responses to high-level commands

Here’s how I know if a student will give a CLEAR, high quality answer
BEFORE they even write it.

(As you can probably guess from me by now, it’s got nothing to do with their subject knowledge).

I just need to find out if they’re CLEAR on what the command word means and what it requires.

And to do that, I just need to ask them one thing about the question they’re about to answer (presuming they already know about command words, what they are and can identify them)…

“What is that command asking you to do?”

If they can answer that question confidently, clearly and succinctly, then they’re on track for a high quality answer (and completing it without unnecessary struggle).

If not, then we’re likely on the road to waffle and vague-ness.

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