I always look forward to Fridays, although not the reasons you might think! My Friday habit is to walk to school (yes, even this morning in the rain), I look forward to this each week as I treat myself to coffee on the way. I get to enjoy the mental release of ‘walking off the week’ on the way home, and I get time to listen to a podcast. Today I listened to an Episode of The High Performance Podcast in which the presenter talked about asking his children questions after school: How was your day? What did you do? And how they just grunted and rolled their eyes in response. It led him to consider if he was asking the right questions, so he changed to more specific ones:
Which questions did you answer in Geography today?
What games did you play with [your best friend] at break today?
Did you get any merits today? Did you do anything that you think deserved a merit?
How long do you think your homework will take to complete?
While there is no guarantee that you won’t get more grunts, the theory goes that the more specific the question, the easier it is to formulate a response as you’ve narrowed down the field of potential answer. It is recognised that offering people fewer choices generates more engagement; you may have come across decision fatigue whereby too many choices cause a type of panic and overwhelm that creates indecision and opting out. So instead of asking ‘How was school?’ which involves mentally sifting through seven hours of experience, asking ‘What was your best move in lunchtime basketball today?’ reduces that load to 30 minutes and may generate more of a conversation. Something to experiment with, but if you don’t fancy it, I can recommend the podcast for some weekend listening!
This week has been busy and felt like we’d hardly been away from school for half term; Years Five and Six have been away on residential and I’ve had a great time following their adventures on our social. Year Eleven and Thirteen have continued with exams, and this morning the senior school had the final house assembly of the year. The efforts that had gone into the tasks and challenges over last half term was phenomenal and I was thrilled to see so many pupils across all year groups and houses taking part, it’s not always easy to perform or present in front of the whole school so I want to acknowledge here the resilience and confidence of those pupils.
And if it wasn’t scary enough to think that we’ve had the first ‘last of the year’, I have a Save the Date for you for next term! Please make a note in your diaries for the annual Prize Giving celebration which is planned to take place on Thursday 2nd October.
And a few more dates for your diary:
25th June – The Hollygirt Summer Art, Food and Craft show complete with the Hollygirt Cafe, Prep and Senior school exhibitions and a number of pupil led workshops. (4pm to 6.15pm)
28th June – The Prep School Garden Party, a fun morning for all with fundraising stalls and raffle prizes to be won. There is still time to donate raffle prizes, please let Mrs Scott or Mrs Wand know if you can donate or know an individual or local business who can.
30th June – Whole School Sports day, we do hope you can join us. If you are able to help serve refreshments for a period on this day, please let me know. Your support is very much appreciated.
Ever Onwards and Upwards,
Ms Purdy
Head