End of term report

As we come to the end of another busy term, I am sure so many of us will have received or remember receiving our children’s school reports. So here is the end of term report for FingerTips!

FingerTips is a TALKING TOGETHER TOOL based on the five fingers of your hand. It is simple to share but has a depth that makes the difference. It equips us for metacognition and empowers oracy and agency. It enables us to connect and reflect or to predict and plan ahead too.

Simply put it empowers everyone that uses it to become Five Finger Thinkers. It is something we never knew we needed but is impossible to put down!

Particularly Proud 
I am particularly proud of FingerTips - it is permeating so many places. This year I have seen it used across whole schools, in high-level strategy meetings, reflecting on driving lessons, and in discussions with girlfriends. It has been used to transform transition meetings and tricky conversations. It has become embedded in language to share successes and in caring conversations to bring behaviours back to brilliant. It has reached places that such a simple strategy could not have been predicted to reach!

At the start of the year FingerTips was embraced by ninety-one staff members across a large school – I introduced it in an INSET with all members of the team from nursery leaders to year six, from office staff to caretakers. I was particularly proud when a lunch time supervisor came to me saying ‘I have been doing my job for thirty years- now with FingerTips I can finally see why I am just as important as everyone else.’

What helped you? Who helped you?
The thing I have found with FingerTips is that I will never know the extent of who it has helped. This became apparent in a restaurant recently.

Years ago, a lovely guy called Chris helped me reflect on my work with out of school clubs. He pointed his index finger and shared ‘When there is one finger pointing at them, there are three pointing back at you.’ This really helped me reflect on my practice - and support the practice of others. I started to work with this gesture and added to it when I was training teachers. I was using FingerTips to help them reflect on their lessons, to have learning conversations - and shared this simple strategy with one of the students’ mentors.

In a restaurant I was recognised. A young woman apologised for interrupting but wanted to share with me just how impactful and memorable FingerTips had been. I had simply spent two minutes explaining the strategy I was using with my student teachers and thought no more about it. Eight years on, she is still using that simple strategy- and using it to lead learning at that same school.

FingerTips helps people by changing the way they feel about feedback, the way they feel about themselves. . Simply the question ‘ What helped you’ or ‘Who helped you’ makes the owner feel warm that either someone cared enough to help or they had found the props or the process for themselves- they recognise for themselves that they have moved forward- that someone believed in them and knew them well enough to scaffold or to suggest the next steps - or they were independent and were able to use their FingerTips towards help for themselves.

Moving children forwards towards self-regulation or taking students of all ages forwards to become more independent in their learning are part of what schools need to put in place - they are part of my current SENCo studies with UCL. Fingertips helps in an unforgettable way. It helps the learners and the listeners not just for now - but for life.

What is tricky and how to tackle it.
In life we often avoid considering what is tricky, because it leaves us feeling like we have failed. The FingerTips ‘What was tricky - and how did you tackle it’ overcomes this - it reflects on the resolution and leaves the learner knowing what they need to help them succeed - or the steps to take to succeed next time. It helps us all see that we can overcome the struggles, it helps us believe in ourselves.

In all my work, I pride myself in sculpting strategies which cannot be misinterpreted. My ‘Simply Brilliant’ tools and techniques are simple enough to be shared and put in place tomorrow but importantly that if misinterpreted they can do no harm. It may be simply common sense but, we need to connect before we correct - even if we are correcting ourselves - and I hold to this. With this third conversation cue it is best not to open a conversation with ‘What is tricky and how did you tackle it’ It is not relational practice, however cleverly crafted the words.

It is important to open with the feelgood FingerTips of Particularly Proud or What helped you? If a child’s learning or behaviour is less than brilliant then we want to work with them to find ways to ‘Bring it Back to Brilliant.’ Help them to see the steps that will help them - never turning proud into a negative.

I was happy to share my FingerTips with an early years Stronger Practice Hub. Faye, one of the delegates flew with FingerTips straight away and gave me some helpful feedback. Her team were struggling to help their little ones understand what ‘Particularly Proud’ meant. (Some neurodivergent adults struggle with this too). She said that she had begun to draw sunshines on the thumbs of children – and when they held their thumbs up sign to their chests – they could feel - ‘What made me shine inside’. This is fabulous and absolutely sums up what how pride can feel inside.

All the FingerTips should connect with feelings and when we take our questions to the next depth we can add this on overtly - ‘What was tricky and how did you tackle it? How did you feel inside? ‘

Repetition of the Right Thing
Interviewing the incredibly warm and wise Steve Biddulph author of Wild Creature Minds this week has brought home to me just how important the way we feel and feel about ourselves, these deep-seated feelings are. It was such a privilege to have the person who put the first pebble in my professional pond on my FingerTips podcast.

This FingerTips catalyst question is about ‘Repetition of the Right Thing’- people and practices we turn to, return to because we know they help us. He taught me ways to regularly connect with feelings to help adults, teens and children transform their anxieties. Having our FingerTips Five Finger Thinking in place has proven to be ‘repetition of the right thing’ for so many of you - and for that I would like to thank you.

Linked Learning
The end of term report for FingerTips has taught me so much. I have loved how I have learned so much more about this tremendous reflecting and connecting tool, but the Linked Learning is about one important thing to take away today that will make a difference tomorrow.

What is my linked learning - that FingerTips is so powerful it is beginning to permeate in so many places. I have placed the pebble and ripples are reaching places I could never have imagined.

Thank you - and do let me know if FingerTips ripples have reached you, how they have touched you and how I can help you to take my Fabulous FingerTips into your future- and that of the families you care for and support.

You can find out more about the FingerTips TALKING TOGETHER TOOL here, and if you like the way I look at learning, I would love to talk with you, with your team and at your event. Call me the old-fashioned way on 07816 408181 or seek me out on socials @AliMcClureEP