Teach Secondary 13.7

interleaving. This might sound obvious to some of us, but if organisation and seeing the bigger picture doesn’t come easily, help students see how they can assemble a jigsaw out of their revision workload; otherwise, there’s a risk of them becoming completely overwhelmed. Planned down-time: It’s all very well scheduling in (essential!) downtime, but when there’s no plan for such time, those blank afternoons can become the periods when stress really starts to build. Students can end up swimming in a stagnant soup of preoccupation – about the looming exam season, or about how they’re not revising. Then the phone- scrolling begins, and that listlessness can breed a sense of hopelessness. Ask your students – ‘ What do you do when you take breaks? Do you make a plan, and what different things can you do to make downtime genuinely restful? ’ Body andmind: Inactive bodies do nothing for our mental health. Talk to your students about the various ways in which they can keep active. You could even show them by taking them out for a walk. Our local high school organises a sponsored 10-mile walk each year – something like that can show many ‘non-sporty’ teenagers how activity can take many forms. Do they knowwhere they can go in their local area and feel safe? Does your school do enough in terms of providing recreational activities for exam year students? Flipping rewards The ultimate reward for highly motivated students is the grade, or the doors that exam grades might open for them. They have a mental picture of where they want to get to, and that’s a healthy driver. Until it isn’t healthy any more. For those who have lost their sense of balance and started sinking into patterns of overwork, can you help themflip the rewards? That is, they get a reward for taking a walk, or for stopping every 40 minutes for a half-hour break (rather than a reward for revising). Long distance runners use a similar strategy, whereby a slow run – which actually has many benefits, but is often dismissed by people too fixated on speed – is set as their weekly goal. Being slow becomes the thing that gets that mental gold star. Catastrophising If you have a student who has become so stressed that they’ve reached the point of catastrophising – ‘ I’m going to fail everything! ’ – do you have some techniques to support them in this state? Listen and acknowledge what they’re saying, but also gently challenge them: ‘ What makes you think you will fail? Which subjects will you definitely not fail? How can we make sure you pass at least one? ’ And so on. Finally, ask them about their sleep (see panel). This is something I’ll always come back to, because sleep quite literally repairs our brains . If a student is looking ragged, work on this first of all. It’s absolutely essential for getting them ‘race-ready’ ahead of that busy exam season. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rebecca Leek has been a primary and secondary teacher, SENCo. headteacher and MAT CEO; she is currently the Executive Director of the Suffolk Primary Headteacher’s Association TOPTIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL SLEEP CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS Respecting how our natural body clocks respond to light and dark makes for a better night’s sleep and a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. Observe how deciduous trees respond in the autumn – they sense the light changing, and their biology kicks in.We respond to light too, so get outside when the sun is coming up in the morning. Even if it’s just for just a few minutes. SCREENS Decide on a place where you’ll keep your phone or tablet overnight – preferably somewhere other than your bedroom. This means you won’t dive into doomscrolling as soon as you wake. Besides which, reading a book at bedtime without a backlit screen is far better for your brain. NAPPING Be very careful with naps. They can be brilliant, but get them wrong, and you’ll lose time in the day you didn’t mean to ( stress! ) and be unable to get to sleep properly at night ( more stress! ). There’s research that says a 20-minute power nap can work wonders, so be disciplined and set an alarm. 33 teachwire.net/secondary R E V I S I O N TEACH SECONDARY SPECIAL REVISION