On Tuesday 15th March, all pupils in year 10 took part in Studying with the Brain in Mind, a fascinating workshop geared towards helping pupils to get the most out of their brain during revision time. It was led by Tom Cooke from Inner Drive, an organisation that has worked with Olympians, top footballers and sports coaches to enable them to achieve their goals through sports psychology. The workshop offered lots of practical tips based on years of cognitive psychology and neuroscience research.

It began by looking at the myth of multitasking and different ways to be more efficient with time. There was a fun experiment challenging pupils to think about how good they were at multitasking and what methods work better.

Next up, pupils looked at memory – working memory and long term memory. They looked at the brain’s limitations and Tom gave pupils lots of tips to help them memorise complex information. Pupils were invited to think about how they revise and they looked at the best revision techniques.

When looking at organisation, Tom asked pupils to consider how the brain has a limited amount of mental energy looking at how their ‘batteries’ or energy becomes depleted throughout the day and with that in mind, how to prioritise easy and harder tasks and stop procrastination.

Finally, pupils explored sleep. It was surprising for many pupils to learn that the optimum amount of sleep required for someone who is 16 years old is nine and a half hours of sleep per night. It is only reduced to eight hours sleep per night when someone reaches 24 years old. These amounts of sleep enable a young person to get the required amount of deep REM sleep. Pupils explored why they may struggle to get enough sleep and the consequences. They looked at ways they could improve their sleep, for example not using a phone, tablet, PC or laptop before bed, using an alarm clock rather than mobile phone and not drinking too much caffeine in the day.

This was a really engaging workshop, with lots of useful information to take away and help our year 10 pupils as they progress in their GCSE studies. Many thanks to Mrs Coxon, Assistant Headteacher, for organising the session.