TRANSCRIPT:
 

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 104: A rant from me about the various posters and handouts I see stuck in the back of students’ exercise books. 

Hey VIP’s! I hope you and your teen’s are having a great week so far.

Now, warning, this episode is going to be a bit of a rant. I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while, and as I’m recording a few podcasts here in one go, so I don’t miss a week while I’m moving house, setting up the internet and all the other things that go along with that, then I thought this would be a good time to share it.

Here’s what I see a lot in schools and lessons generally.

There are posters up on the wall with things like sentence starters, command words - might be called task words, cognitive verbs, paragraph structure templates like TEEL or PETAL. There are handouts stuck into books with things like steps or stages of an inquiry task. Or acronyms for evaluating sources.

These are all well and good. 

They’re not wrong and they can certainly be valuable aids to helping your teen study and fulfil the success criteria. My issue is that hardly any students understand the workings behind them, aren’t skilled in how to use them, or even, have never actually had any of this fully explained to them.

It’s just - here you go, That should help. Or refer to the handout. Or use the structure you’ve been given. Follow the scaffold.

That’s a bit like giving me all the parts of a car and saying, here you go. Now drive from Lands End to John -O Groats. You’ve got everything you need. Now make it happen.
When I’ve got no idea about car mechanics, don’t understand how any of it really works.

But it’s actually even worse than that. Because it’s not quite that obvious a gap.

Because students have seen the posters or exam board handout with the list of command words, like analyse - and the definition next to it of what it means, that now means that they are familiar with it and they feel like they should know it.

Just like I drive around in a car and therefore should know how to put one together or how it works. In fact, that’s more like giving your teen a model response or A grade essay and then expecting them to be able to write their own top mark essay. 

I won’t go into that here - but I did do a whole episode on Why A-Grade Exemplars Aren’t All That in Episode 72. So you can go give that a listen after if you want to.

This is more an issue that I think a lot of students are just struggling through. Guessing their way to things with a fair degree of uncertainty.  They think they know what counts as analysis rather than just explanation because they’ve seen the posters a thousand times and have the hand out. 

But if they had to tell you specifically - what does it mean to analyse and how do you do it? - could they do that clearly and succinctly in their own words? 
ARE they doing it clearly and succinctly in their WORK?

It’s all well and good the poster defining each command, but does your teen know how to dissect a question and work out for themselves, is this asking me to compare? Is this asking me to apply? Does this require an explanation or just a description?

I sometimes have students tell me - oh yeah, my school already does this. But if we dig a little deeper, it’s more like, my school DISPLAYS some of these concepts or gave me a handout to stick in, but they don’t actually TRAIN us in them. 

Now, some students don’t feel like they want to have the full training in them. They feel like they get it. And I totally understand that. I don’t want to learn car mechanics. I just want to drive the car.

But I am very clear that I don’t know anything about car mechanics. I am not thinking that maybe I do. 

So, I don’t have an action step here. 

I don’t have a do and don’t list.

I just want to share a bit of awareness. 
And yes, rant a little bit.

It’s not enough to have posters up or handouts stuck in.

Students need to know how to identify, dissect and do these things for themselves independently and understand why and how they work. So they can manipulate a TEEL paragraph to make it work better for the evidence they have or the topic they are discussing in that paragraph in relation to their thesis statement and the question. So they can figure this stuff out under time pressure, on their own, with a never seen before 8 mark question in an exam hall. And figure it out on their own at home at 9pm when they’re tired after footy practice but still need to get that homework done.

And so that they are confident and independent and skilled, not relying on teacher input, draft feedback or a little bit of luck to get their next great result.

If there’s something your teen has been given in their study, but they don’t REALLY know how to do it or how it works or why it’s set up that way - whatever it is - I’m really happy for you to send it to me. support@rocksolidstudy.com 

OR of course, if they’re in the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program or Next Level Coaching, definitely have them bring it to one of our coaching calls and we’ll work on it together. 

I’m often being presented with some new and different acronyms or steps that students have been advised to use. And very often they are great. It’s just that the students need to be properly trained in how to use them and skilled in being able to do whatever it is effectively and knowingly - not just blindly following.

So, that’s my rant. And my offer to help :)

Have a great day and I’ll see you back here on the next episode.

Bye!