10 Ways to Catapult Results and Confidence

Ep. 154

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Listen in for the top 10 ways that I've found to be the most effective in catapulting students' results AND confidence in a fast yet sustainable way.

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Transcript

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You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 154 - 
10 Ways to Catapult Result and Confidence - AND how you can have every single one happen for your teen.

Hey VIPs. 

One of my favourite things about the skills and techniques that I teach is the fact that they do the TWO things that students and parents most want: 
Have them achieving the results that match their subject knowledge and ability - and increase their confidence so they feel clear on what they need to do know exactly how to to it. 

This is what I’ve dedicated myself to for over ten years now, and is exactly what I deliver in my flagship program: the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program. And I realised that I’ve never really shared in detail the content of the 10WGT here on the podcast, So, I figured now is a great time to share it and I’m going to do it in a very specific way. 

With a focus on explaining each concept, each skillset simultaneously catapults your teen’s results and confidence - and does it fast and sustainably- in a way that lasts. 
These are concepts that once you see them and understand them, you can’t unsee them, and skills that are like riding a bike. Once you know them and can do them - you don’t lose them. They just become a way that you study, the way you view and see questions. The way you tackle assignments, essays and reports. Everything just becomes clearer, easier (easiER - not easy) and therefore faster and better. 

So, here we go. 

Catapult 1 of the 10WGT is Focused and Fired Up.  But this is NOT a motivational video, work hard and you can achieve your dreams thing - there are plenty of students working super hard and not hitting the results they could or should be. And actually working harder than they need to because they’re going about things the long and hard way. 

This is about understanding why that is happening and what’s required to actually achieve a clear focus on what’s required for any exam question, essay question or assignment.  I deliver the study success formula - with the key ingredient that most students are missing, I explain the two types of procrastination and why they can keep even the smartest student trapped - and how to overcome them. 
And I also give your teen a proven system to breakdown big goals into clear, manageable, actionable tasks.
This means that your teen is focusing on the most impactful elements that will make the biggest difference to their study.

For example, the study success formula: Knowledge, plus application = success.
If their weakest link right now is application, - if their subject knowledge is good or even great, but their application of that knowledge in the way the questions ask or mark scheme requires is the missing piece of their puzzle, then THAT is what will most increase their results and their confidence in knowing what’s being asked and how to respond. Learning more subject knowledge won’t make much of a difference because it’s like putting more fuel in a car without wheels - or at least with flat tyres. We need to figure out where the focus needs to be in order to really catapult their performance. 

Next, Catapult 2: Organised, Efficient and Ready for Action  

This is where your teen discovers all the things they’re doing or not doing that are keeping them in procrastination mode, slowing down their rate of productivity, keeping them overwhelmed or stressed by how much they have to do, and giving them the systems and strategies to complete small or large tasks efficiently and strategically - in the way that makes the most sense, will be faster AND will produce the best quality outcome. For example - let’s take essays - often big and overwhelming tasks. 
Firstly chunking tasks down according to time and outcome. I call this scheduling outcomes. Don’t say I’m going to work on my essay this evening. Say I’m going to find all of the quotes and organise them into my body paragraphs - and that’s going to take me - what - 30 minutes. Then I’m going to write body paragraph 1 - 30 mins. And should be much easier and faster now we know the quotes and order of them, hey. Notice I didn’t start with the intro of the essay. I always advise writing the intro last in an essay. It’s so common for students to stall just trying to get started. And understandably so. It’s hard to introduce something you haven’t written yet. So write all the body paragraphs - the parts that also get you most marks - and THEN go write the intro and conclusion. It’ll be SO much easier - more on essays in Number 9.

Okay - third way to catapult results and confidence: 

Note-taking. This can be so time-consuming for students. Before they even start any style or format of note-taking they need to know what the focus is - why they are taking these notes - is it for a case study - and what is that being used for - and how? 
Is it for revision? Is it just part of learning a topic? 

These will all impact the decision on the best way to note-take and the most appropriate format. 
What we don’t want here is War and Peace: which what I always remember one parent describing their daughter’s notes to me as. That huge collection of information that makes us feel good - maybe even creates some level of confidence - but that’s only good if it then translates into the performance and results. Because nothing knocks confidence like giving what we think is a great piece of work, only for it to achieve a result that’s lower than we were expecting.

Fourth way to catapult results and confidence: 

Reverse-engineered revision planning - so that you don’t run out of time to cover all of the content and you put the right emphasis and extra time into the things that need them.

And then fifth: Using revision techniques that actually work - so information goes in, is processed so that it actually stays in and then flows easily from brain to paper.

Your teen need to be using ACTIVE revision strategies to do this. And unfortunately most of the traditional methods are passive rather than active. So this is really important when it comes to ensuring they truly understand the content and can then apply it to whatever the question asks in an exam. 

Okay - How to catapult results and confidence - Skill number 6. 

My favourite: The 6 elements of exam technique. 

Over the years I’ve condensed and refined my personal descriptions and definitions of what Exam technique is. It’s evolved from: being able to convey the subject knowledge your teen has in the way the question requires and mark scheme demands. I still like that definition. It’s definitely focused on the catapulting results half of this podcast focus.  But I also like my ultra-succinct version - which is: 
getting the most marks in the least words. 

In other words - giving the marker what they want, in the most direct, succinct and effective way. Not giving extra info, just in case, not waffling or saying the same thing in a different way, not writing a bit more in the hope that it’ll impress. 

It’s knowing what the question and mark scheme want - knowing how to get that across given the subject knowledge you have, AND - importantly also knowing what it doesn’t want. I often say that the ultimate in exam technique is being able to know when to STOP writing. Knowing exactly when you have the right number of examples, or the right amount of detail.And you confidently put a full stop and move onto the next Q. That is the ultimate in confidence. 

That brings us nicely to Skill Number 7: Command words. 

Now knowing how to identify and respond to command is one of the 6 elements of exam technique - but it’s so important and big that it gets its’ whole own catapult module. 
Command words are the cognitive verbs in questions. The ones that - if you’re like me as a student - or as many students still tell me today: the words that the teacher or examiner just mixes up a bit thinking its just to keep things a bit less boring. 
Words like describe, explain, justify, state, define, discuss - ah - discuss. And many, many more. 

These all require different things and are operating at different cognitive levels. 
So it’s obvious to see that knowing how to identify and respond to them is critical and key to catapulting results, because you’ll be hitting more of the marks, especially at the higher mark questions, where they aren’t just asking you to define or identify or state one or two things for one or two marks, but are asking your teen to compare, discuss, analyse or consider to what extent for 6, 10 or maybe 15 marks - or even 20,25, 30 marks in an essay question.And when your teen knows exactly what a question is really asking, and what it therefore requires, there’s a ton more clarity in being able to respond confidently and clearly. A lot of potentially wasted writing, time, word count and effort saved. 

Now, back to those 6, 10, 15, up to 30 mark questions, the extended response and essay Qs. As you can imagine, these require some special attention. And that’s exactly what we do in Catapult 8: Tackling the Toughest, Top Level Commands: And these commands are the ones that operate at the analyse and evaluate levels. Which are also the levels that any and every essay question operates at. Even if the command word in the essay actually says explain, I can 99.9% guarantee that it is actually requiring an analysis level response.

So it’s critical that your teen knows how to discern these levels of questions, how to dissect them accurately, and how to respond appropriately if they’re to get the marks they’re capable of and to reduce the confusion, overwhelm or general vagueness that often comes with them and increase the clarity to respond confidently.

Okay - final two ways to catapult results and confidence.

Catapult 9 - Essays Made Easy.
This is where I train your teen in the 2 step Topic and Focus system to dissect essay questions accurately, avoid falling into the Topic Trap, and ensure they produce a focused, high quality, succinct yet sophisticated essay. They also need the structure and planning skills - planning being a step that students hate - they just want to get on with the essay - or feel they don’t ahve time to plan if they’re in a timed exam. 

But a solid plan is essential for a high quality response that can also be written SO much faster - I often say that however much time is spent on planning - they’ll save double that on the writing time by having it. As long as they have the right kind of plan. 

And within this comes structure and content. Coming up with a structure that not only flows, but actually adds value to the response in the way the points build. And selecting the best evidence to integrate in the most effective way.

All of this creates a higher-achieving essay and has it done a lot more easily, confidently, cleanly.

And finally - what’s the one thing that is key to achieving top marks, and the confidence that comes from those top marks? Understanding and meeting the descriptors on the mark scheme. Being able to figure our what they really mean when provided with an assignment, i.e. what does discerning selection of evidence really look like, or what’s the difference between a detailed explanation and a sophisticated explanation?

And even - being able to mentally predict what the mark scheme will include or say when in an exam situation - when they have to essentially guess what the examiner wants. We don’t want them guessing, we want them strategically and accurately predicting.

Being able to figure out from the wording of a question what marks will be allocated for what, and how to achieve them is a high level skill, and is probably the one that really benefits from continual and focused practice. Which luckily, thanks to the wealth of past papers we can use, we can do this. I know that many students want to focus on practicing writing answers to past papers or to practice Qs, but honestly, they can often get as much if not more value from playing a fun little game of predict the mark scheme with a past paper - and it means they can get a lot more practice in as well. They could get through perhaps 2 or 3 papers in an hour, versus taking say 2 hours to complete one paper. So 10th way to catapult results and confidence is mastering mark schemes. 

 
To recap:

1) Focus and Commitment - making sure they’re focusing on their weakest link so they’re putting their time and effort into the skills and work that will give them the biggest bang for their buck.

2) Efficiency and organisation: How to reduce stress, overwhelm and procrastination by treating it at the source, replacing the never ending to-do list with ‘scheduled outcomes’ and getting way more strategic so they’re not just ‘studying’ but actually producing tangible outcomes. So they spend less time studying, have more time for other things in life, AND still get better results 

3)  Note -taking. Stop the war and peace notes, and instead have useful notes that they actually understand and remember and are crafted with the purpose or outcome in mind.

4) Revision planning - specifically reverse engineered revision planning, so they’re not revising according to a simple list of topics - that is a recipe for running out of time to cover everything. 
But instead revising according to a pre-determined plan that’s based on priorities, actual available time and a schedule of content.

5) Revision Techniques that actually work. 
REmember the study success formula is knowledge + application = success, so as much as I focus a lot on the skills of application, I do also want to make sure students have their subject knowledge ready to go. And there are definitely super-effective techniques as well as super slow and time consuming techniques as well as virtually useless techniques. So I want your teen using the former.

6) Excellent exam technique. The 6 elements of exam technique that ensure your teen get the most marks possible with the subject knowledge they have, in the least words. 

7) Conquering Command Words: Knowing exactly what a question is asking and having the skills to respond at the right level, with the right amount of detail. In other words actually answering the question.

8) Tackling the toughest top level commands of analyse and evaluate. So your teen hits more of the success criteria in these high mark questions. These really are the questions that post the greatest opportunity - these are the ones that are the easiest places to pick up marks and the easiest places to lose them.

9) Okay - Number 9 - Essay strategy - not falling into the topic trap and ensuring a structured and focused response, with sophisticated selection and integration of evidence, points that don’t just flow but build, and an essay that is gets written within word count or within time limits.

And Number 10) Mastering mark schemes: A) understanding what the wording of mark schemes really means, and B) being able to mentally predict the mark scheme when in the exam hall.

If you want your teen to be trained in all 10 of these things, plus some specially selected bonus additions, including being able to have me directly provide feedback and guidance on their own work and be able to discuss applying any of these concepts and strategies to their tasks, exam papers, assignments, then I invite you to check out the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program. It’s at www.gradetransformation.com/join and  I’ll put the direct link into the show notes. I’d love to have your teen join me and hundreds of other like-minded students who have completed this training. In fact, on that page you can see feedback from a lot of them, so I highly recommend checking out that page if only to see the sorts of outcomes that these skills and techniques create for students.

Any questions, just email support@rocksolidstudy.com and I’ll meet you back here next time!