Mental Toughness Sunday, 09 December 2018

Background A research project across 400 private and state schools to consider the ‘mental toughness’ of the pupils. JWP ran this in Summer 2016 in Y10 and Y12 of JLS. Challenge, Commitment, Confidence and Control. Two areas of the four considered stood out: Concentration and Confidence – the first was very low, the second often very high. Outlying results are not a good thing!

2 activities in 10 minutes Concentration: Number grids Confidence: Shooting baskets.

Concentration You have 45 seconds to tick off as many numbers from 1-100 as you can from the number grids provided. U:\ISC soft VA\possible resources\concentration\Number grids.docx We will feed back the responses… 27 9 71 60 24 8 85 41 65 30 48 51 92 81 99 84 31 64 2 59 10 70 15 34 56 23 90 35 76 22 39 88 68 43 96 80 100 58 47 42 63 67 33 11 1 14 3 13 26 53 21 93 62 25 79 98 50 75 38 28 6 83 54 95 72 7 73 91 4 66 77 94 16 89 57 17 97 12 87 29 40 44 82 78 61 18 74 36 52 46 20 69 32 55 45 49 5 86 37 19

Confidence / Concentration. All you have to do is throw paper balls into the bin… But you have to predict how many of your 5 balls you will get in… The more you predict, the greater the pressure to succeed… Are you feeling lucky…? Questions to students: why did you choose your number? Would you consider yourself confident? Etc…

US Basketball activity 1. Everyone pair up and face each other. You will play a competitive game with each other but first you need to learn how to play the game. 2. Praxtice: Firstly stand with hands behind your backs. Then bring your hands up in front of yourselves with the palms of your hands facing away from you (at around chest height) and with the palms facing the other person’s palms so that all four hands are comfortably in sight of both of you. 3. When ready, say: You are going to compete with each other over 5 rounds. Only now when you bring your hands up, you choose how many fingers and thumbs you will show. You do this whilst your hands are behind your back. The winner is the one who counts all the fingers (and thumbs) on all four hands in front of them and who is the first to shout out the correct answer. 4. We will now play 3 rounds 5. Don’t cheat – vary the numbers each time and don’t delay…. 6. What are the scores? Any obvious leaders? 7. ROUND 4: Winner takes all.

How did you feel when I changed the rules before the last round How did you feel when I changed the rules before the last round? How did those ahead feel and how did those who were behind feel? What did it do to their mindset – were they more or less determined to win? Those who were behind: talk about how your mindset changed from feeling you were losing to feeling you were in with a chance. The trick is to do this in the head at any time. Students can do that at any time simply by imagining everything is still possible when things go badly.  What did you do to improve focus as the exercise progressed? Can students do this elsewhere – like doing coursework, writing assignments, before an exam, etc?