TRANSCRIPT:

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 118 - and if your teen has ever questioned or sulked ‘what’s even the point of this task?’, or exclaimed ‘why am I having to do this?’ I want to let you know - those are actually very strategic and smart questions. And if they’re not already questioning that, then they should be.

Sometimes the reason - the point of the assignment, essay, research project, design task - or whatever it is - can be a significant clue to what the marker wants and how to tackle the task in a much more strategic and ultimately successful way.

Hey VIP’s! How are you? I am doing SO well. 

I have been so energised by everything that’s been happening behind the scenes here over the school holidays and so before I explain the magic of truly knowing the point of any assessment or assignment, I’ll quickly fill you in:

First - house update: reno plans are taking shape. Had a meeting with a builder who was recommended to us, and we’re now much more on the excited rather than daunted and overwhelmed side of things with that at the moment. I know it will be a rollercoaster, but you’ve gotta enjoy the highs right. Plus, with the fabulous spring weather, my husband and I - and the dog - have been really enjoying our new location and scenery. We actually said to each other - even if we could never do anything to the house, we’d still choose to live here. Because we have a beautiful view and outlook, a great location and we’d still choose that WITH the disabled toilet set up, oven that you have to turn off at the mains in the garage otherwise it just constantly buzzes, and a dripping shower tap and a ‘sun room’ that leaks whenever it rains - which of course in QLD in winter and spring is not too often, we might feel differently when we get to the back end of summer and those tropical storms! We did know all of this when we bought it, so this is not me complaining, just thought I’d share what daily life in the Jones household looks like at the moment.

Now, more importantly - the second wonderful thing, if you hadn’t already heard - I shared a while back: our mission at Rock Solid Study is to put ourselves out of business by having every student, parent and teacher know exactly how to make assessment, exams and study in general work for teens today, rather than against them. Be experts in exam technique, be confident in essays and assignments, be effective in their daily study. And in line with that, I am launching online parent information evenings and exam focus presentations for schools. That is - specialist presentations delivered live to parents and students, and tailored for individual schools. I also have accompanying Teacher Professional Development workshops, and I know that a few of you listening are also teachers yourselves, so I will just mention that briefly here.

So, if you’d like to have me speak at an online event to your school community, share my insights as a senior external examiner, deliver my best strategies and specific techniques to help students succeed and empower parents to support them - in the most effective ways -then please pass on my details or the following web link to your school leadership team, head of year, or academic leader.

www.rocksolidstudy.com/schools.

This is the next step to trying to make sure every student, parent and teacher knows exactly how to turn external exams into a source of success rather than stress - for all - and I am so excited to be able to spread this information to more parents and students who want and need it, and help in more ways to get this information, these insights, and the actionable skills and techniques out there. 

Now, into today’s epsiode - at the other end of that scale, I also work with students 1-1 in my Next Level Coaching program. And last week, I coached a student - I’ll call her Mary - I was coaching Mary on an assignment that ended up taking a very different turn to how she thought it would when he came on the call. And it was so significant that I thought I’d share it with you so that you can help your teen tackle tasks in a really strategic AND really high level, successful way.

Now, here’s the task this student came to me with.

They had to design a dress for Lady Macbeth and then write an extended response - I think it was about 700-800 words about it.

And this student wanted coaching on basically adding more or filling out her extended response. She had I think about 500 words, and wasn’t sure what else to write.

And let me tell you - shock-horror - I didn’t even end up reading anything that she had written. We didn’t go through her writing to show her how to make it more detailed - although we did definitely cover ways to ‘add more detail’.

We didn’t add more to the dress design. In fact we actually cut out a couple of design features - there was actually too much to talk about. And we didn’t work on improving her quality of written communication. Her vocab or sentence structures or grammar - but we definitely did discuss how to improve the overall standard of her response from a more strategic approach that would instantly lift the level of response to a higher band or level on the mark scheme.

So, here’s what happened:

Mary had sent through to me the dress design that she’d drawn.
Even without knowing the play in any detail - I’m not an English teacher and I didn’t happen to study this particular Shakespeare play at school - 
I could tell they’d made some good links to the character of Lady Macbeth and what was happening in the play in relation to the character. For example, on the skirt of the dress was a big green serpent. I figured that wasn’t just there to look pretty.

I got Mary to tell me a bit about a few of her design choices and the reasoning behind them. They were all valid, though a little surface level. Like Lady Macbeth is regal, so her headpiece is purple which is a colour symbolic of royalty.
Fine, but we could consider that, at this level, - this student is in Y10 - to be a bit basic.

After about 3 or 4 design choices explained, I then asked Mary - tell me how you’ve gone about structuring your response. And it was a bit hap-hazard. Well, not hap hazard as such, it wasn’t all over the place. There were links between different elements, like the gold jewellery symbolised wealth- which went along with the purple headpiece. But, there wasn’t any real strategy to it. 
It was more of a recount: this - which shows this. This - which is because of this.
So it was a bit surface level. As our English Focus Coach Gemma would say - you want to say a LOT about a LITTLE. 

But I didn’t just want to tell Mary to do this. I know that she would if I simply said it, but I wanted her to become more skilled, thinking more strategically and more independent to do this for ANY task for any subject from now on.

So I asked: Why do you think they want you to design and then write about an outfit for Lady Macbeth?

What is the point of this task? 

Why has the teacher set this? 

What do they want to know - that YOU know or understand or can do?

Because - this isn’t design and textiles. This is English. This is an English literature assignment. It is not an art assignment.

In other words, it’s not about the dress.
Side note here - therefore this is a perfect example of where to put in time and effort.  Should your teen put in a ton of time and effort drawing, sketching, designing and refining the perfect dress on paper?? 

No!
It’s not about the dress. 

Now if your teen loves stuff like that - designing, and being creative and making beautiful art sketches, great. Just make sure they know that’s their leisure time they’re spending on it. It’s for pleasure. They want the design to be clear and smart. But it does not need to be a work of art. 

So, if it’s not about the dress, then what IS it about?

Mary totally got this: She told me: The teacher wants to know how well I know the character of Lady Macbeth. 

Spot on.

What sort of person is she? On the outside, on the inside? What does she do, not do - and why? Do we understand the obvious characteristics and can we see the more subtle ones?

The items on the dress need to SHOW that we KNOW ALL of that. Therefore the extended response is an ANALYSIS of the dress. Name the feature, explain the meaning or symbolism - and what does this TELL us - the viewer, the audience - about Lady Macbeth?

When we reverse the task and consider - What’s the point of this task. Like really - actually - what is the point? Why have they set this? What do they want to know that I know? And therefore what do I need to focus on in order to do that, then we have clarity on what to focus on, where to put in thought and effort and time, and where we don’t really need to. 

So, which design features are we going to focus on discussing in the extended response? And here is the high level part: are we just going to mention them in an order that focuses on the design, on the dress, OR - and this was my suggestion to Mary - could we structure that whole extended response on the key characteristics of Lady Macbeth, the themes of the play and how she fits into them, the message, thoughts and feelings that Shakespeare wants to feed to the audience about this character. 

Because that’s the whole point of this task.

To see how well you know that.

And that gave Mary a way to restructure the content she had, and then expand and go deeper on some specific design features that would demonstrate that she really knew those things. Deeply understood them.

So, if your teen ever exclaims ‘ what’s the point of this?’ they’re actually asking a GREAT question. In fact, I would recommend this being one of the first questions they ask when they start out.  What actually is the point of this task? What am I supposed to be showing and demonstrating here? What is this a vehicle to show or demonstrate. 

I spoke about this with regards to writing short stories, narratives and creative writing before - you can go check that out in episode 18 - why creative tasks aren’t actually creative - you can totally see how that applies to something like this - the dress design. (I’ll say it again - it’s not about the dress!)  and also Episode 64: shortcuts to a stunning short story.

Because knowing this will give them a clear focus, clarity on what they need to do, where to put in the most time and effort - or even where to spend their word count.

So, I hope that helps. Helps you have a constructive rebuttal to that ‘what’s the point’ question and helps your teen tackle assessments much more strategically and confidently. Because they actually get the point and therefore make sure they respond - on point.

And I really hope to perhaps be speaking to your school parent and student community at some point in the future! 

Remember that a rising tide lifts all ships - so the more successful your teen’s school and their particular cohort as a whole, the more that will lift your teen’s results. Either because in Australia, school’s results are actually moderated up or down according to the performance of the cohort, or because all your teen’s classes and classmates will be able to operate at a higher level overall, without them being left behind. 

They’ll be able to have higher quality conversations - with classmates, with teachers, the whole culture will take on a different angle when everyone knows and understands and is working with the skills of exam technique, strategic study, and a confident approach. 

If you’d like to open this up to your teens school, send an email to the Deputy Head or Director of Teaching and Learning, or their head of year, with the following link: www.rocksolidstudy.com/schools.

I hope you and your teen have a brilliant week - and I’ll see you back here next week!