Gorilla Scratching Head flickr photo by Eric Kilby shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license 

How many of your friends and families birthdays do you know off by heart? Do you ever forget where you put your keys/wallet/phone? How much of what you learnt in last week’s lessons can you remember?

You may not believe it but our brains are amazing at remembering things. Have a go at these true or false facts...

All our senses play an important part in our memory, check out this video that relates music and memory.

What songs create memories for you? Share these with one another.

Prayer:
Thank you God for our amazing brains, and for the memories we can make and share.
May we remember that we are loved and valued, that we belong and that we have purpose.
May we have clear and open minds that we may fulfil more of our amazing potential
AMEN.

Being able to revise is a skill that we all have to learn. Everyone deals with exams differently, but is your revision technique helpful?

Quiz yourself and find out. For each question below, decide which letter you are – write them down as you will find out a bit more about yourself by the end.

Add up your answers (how many As, Bs, Cs and Ds)

If you got mostly As your revision style is the CRAMMER.

You tend to leave all your revision until the last minute, with the hope that it will be fresh in your mind come the exam.
The problem is you may just well do the bits that you like and leave the harder bits that you don’t enjoy as much so your knowledge has large holes in it.
You are likely to do most of your work in the few days and night before your exam, which will mean you head into your exam tired, exhausted and unable to function properly and think clearly.

Why not try – making a revision planner and allocating a number of hours to every exam topic you have to cover, making sure that you allocate more time to those bits you didn’t understand as well.
Make a set of questions that you run through after everything you try to revise and go back over anything that you think hasn’t sunk in.

If you got mostly Bs your revision style is the SOLO PERFECTIONIST

You are methodical in the way that you approach revision and usually study in a sensible way. You like getting organised – making up your own study agenda and ensuring that you stick to it. You dedicate time to all aspects of your course in your revision plan, and go over everything you’ve learnt to make sure it’s gone in.

Why not try - setting aside time to learn with other people. Sometimes you can pick up more by interacting with others and finding out what they know.
If you do too much, you will burn yourself out and not keep up the enthusiasm, so build in a little and often for a few weeks before the exams and building in more steadily.
Give yourself regular breaks away from the books and your computer to enable you to let what you’ve learnt sink in.

If you got mostly Cs your revision style is the PUT IT OFF FOREVER

You hate studying and will do anything rather than actually start knuckling down to it. You will find any reason to get in the way of the studying, including parties, shopping trips or perhaps just not feeling up to it.
You’ve never made a revision planner that is longer than a week long, and you are concerned that starting early may just mean that you forget the sections you learnt three months ago.

Why not try - Thinking about ways that you can make it more interesting for yourself. Create your own brightly coloured posters highlighting key bits of information that you need to learn and hang them next to where you do your hair or make-up and try and recite them over and over again.
Colour code your notes and create mind maps and spider diagrams to make the work seem more visual (see our article on memorising facts). Build in key treats and breaks – but don’t do too many of them. You need to have something to look forward to, but they should not distract you from the job at hand – which is focusing on your exams.

If you got mostly Ds your revision style is the TEAM PLAYER

You like to study with other people because you think the thought of just sitting reading over and over again will be too dull for you.
Your ideal revision plan is to go over past papers with friends, make up quizzes and make the whole thing more sociable. A study partner who is motivated can be very inspirational, and you can spur each other on when one of you is feeling a bit deflated or jaded, so it’s a good idea to join forces.

Why not try: Working with friends is a good idea, but make sure that they are friends who will not distract you. There will be times, however, that you have to just learn information and memorise key facts yourself. If you find this too daunting, record yourself on a recording device or your phone and listen to it back and try walking around the room. Create posters and revision cards to help you flick through key bits of information while you are brushing your teeth, and make up quizzes to test yourself. Repeat key facts over and over and make acronyms and rhymes up (see memory styles).

The Bible says,

23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.
24 Remember that the Lord will give you a reward that he has kept for his people. For Christ is the real Master you serve.

Colossians 3:23-24

This means that we should try our best at everything we do. This includes revising. Here is a film clip that has some good tips to help you revise:

Reflection

Why is revising important?
How do you revise best?
What stops you from revising and studying?
What could you do to help you stay focussed?

Prayer:
Dear Lord
Help me to focus on all my subjects and concentrate well in lessons.

When revising, give me creative ideas and strategies to use my brain effectively.

Thank you that you are always with me and will help me to do well. I really want to try my best and revise well.

Please calm my nerves and give me peace before each exam.

Amen

This week's Worship is by Mrs Tredget, the school's counsellor.

We all have mental health!

World Mental Health Day is on 10 October and the focus this year is on young people’s mental health.

What is mental health?
We all have mental health, just like we all have physical health and it is important that we look after ourselves emotionally just as we do physically.

The Alive Theme this week is “I Value Myself”. Valuing yourself is about accepting yourself as you are and looking after yourself. If you are physically ill, you might take some medicine, stay in bed and sleep some more or watch a film. If you were feeling unhappy, what things might you do to make yourself feel better? (If it is difficult to think about what you’d do to look after yourself, think about what you might do to make a friend feel a bit better). What would work best for you?

Have a look at this clip about Sasha and André:

Having seen that, can you think of other ways in which you can look after your mental health?

The Bible tells us that God looks after even the tiniest sparrow and that he loves us much, much more than the sparrows. Jesus loved and spent time with people who were poor or who didn’t quite fit into society or who were seen as bad. His love was for them too.

Prayer:

Dear God,
You love us and promised that you would hold us in the palm of your hand.
As you care for those who are sad or hurting, and comfort those who are panicking or dealing with difficult things, help us to be kind to ourselves even when we are disappointed or angry with ourselves.
And when our faith in everything is fragile, help us find hope even in the smallest things and know that you always love us.

We all have mental health - look after yours!

For staff:
A link to free animation and downloadable teacher toolkit: We All Have Mental Health 

This is a link to the assembly https://www.annafreud.org/media/8018/wahmh-assembly-powerpoint-final.pdf

Look at each of the following items. Which one do you think is the most expensive and which one is the cheapest?

An electric guitar

A diamond ring

An old pair of glasses

By Sam Howzit [CC BY 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Another electric guitar

How much do you think each item would cost?

How do you decide how much each item is worth?

Here are the answers (hover over each title):

The first guitar 

The diamond ring 

The glasses 

The second electric guitar

Some of the items in the pictures are only valuable because of who they belong to and because someone is willing to pay a lot of money for them.

You are valuable. Jesus was willing to pay the ultimate price for you and so you are very valuable to Him. As Christians, we believe that we are children of God, so we belong to God. This means we have a famous owner too. So we are very valuable. We may not be as shiny as the diamond ring and sometimes might feel a bit fragile like the old glasses. But God thinks we are valuable.

Reflection
The ALIVE theme this week is, ‘I value myself’. Enjoy being unique and value who you are! Here is a reflection to help. Fill in the gaps with words that are unique to you.

I am the greatest thing since ….
No-one else can …like me.
My friends say that I am …
So today, I am going to stop thinking that I am …
And start to believe that I am …
Because I am a child of God and He values me more than anyone else in the world ever could.

Prayer
Dear Lord, thank you that you value us more than we could ever realise. Help us to value each other and ourselves in the same way. Thank you that you made each one of us different and unique; which makes us even more valuable. Help us to use our talents to help others.
Amen

Call to Action
This week, pay compliments to your friends to help them realise that they are valuable. Choose a different person every day.

Chaplain Joey worked on this worship with Juliet, the visiting student from Ikoba Girls school.

Our plan
Juliet’s dream job is to be an engineer. She is inspired by an uncle who is an engineer. He was very organized, respectful to his bosses, and knew what he had to do each day to be excellent.
Juliet wants to know, what is your dream job and, what would you need to do to get to that job and be good at it?

‘I can plan’ A poem By Juliet.

I believe in planning, What a wonderful thing it is to plan.
One gets to prepare for the day. Possibly work, a lesson, a tour, and what so ever.

Planning; helps people to keep and save time because one knows what to do, and at what time to do it.
It also eases work. Since a person knows and has prepared for what he is doing?

Planning; you are for everybody. Teachers, preachers, and engineers.
You are essential for everyone. Without you, everything would be stuck.
To preach God’s word you need planning. To conduct a lesson you need planning.
To start a family you need planning. Even God plans for his people.
Oh planing, you should continue forever.

God’s plan
Did you know it took three attempts for our Ugandan visitors to get their visas? What affect did our prayers have on this?

When I search for songs about God’s plan, it’s hard to ignore Drake’s. Most of you will have heard it being overplayed last year, but did you ever consider what it means? 

After this song came out, some religious leaders were asked for their response to the song and to the idea of God’s plan. https://www.thefader.com/2018/02/23/drake-gods-plan-religion-leaders

Split into four groups and discuss how the religious leader’s response compares to your own.

Discuss, how can people know God’s plan?

Proverbs 16:9 Amplified Bible (AMP)
A man’s mind plans his way [as he journeys],

But the LORD directs his steps and establishes them.

Prayer:
Father God,
May we know your guidance and direction as we journey through life.
May we trust that you care about our plans, and will bring clarity to them.
Amen.