You can do this

This video is getting towards the 2 million  in 4 years views on You Tube so it holds meaning for people. The Personal and Social Capability is about enabling or blocking yourself and enabling or blocking others. Could you do any of the things shown in this video? Would you want to? Would you want to encourage others to do any of the things in this video? Would you want to be the one who stops them? I don’t want to jump into the Grand Canyon or anything like it. I would not encourage anyone else to do it. This video has made me think about where my boundaries are and where they are for me as a teacher. There is no doubt when you watch the video that these people are truly amazing in what they can do and what they have achieved. It really is about how high we can fly as human beings. I was thinking about the risk assessment for some of the things. What would it be and how would you put it in place? This is why we need the Personal and Social Capability. We do need to enable ourselves and others. We shouldn’t block ourselves and certainly not others…but where would you put the boundaries?

Goal setting

I love little videos like this. They are engaging, they are uplifting and they make you feel like you can change and achieve. Goal setting comes up under self-management in the ACARA personal and social capability and I think the one step at a time is a good way to help students manage their approach to changing themselves for the better and getting what they want. They can use graphic organisers and mind maps to help themselves to work out the steps. It would be a good exercise to allow them to discuss their hopes and plans with others too. There would be all sorts of ways they could visually represent these steps so it would be an interesting visual and creative exercise too.

The value of student self-review Year 8

Now I have been through the self review of the personal capabilities of self-management and self-awareness I can already see the time was well spent. Yes, already. From the time we looked at self-awareness there was a culture change in the class to that of being more focussed and particular. Having also done the self-management and then the goal setting I can see the benefits already. I now have ways of expressing how to improve. It’s consistent because we have all done that exercise. I can now ask all students to be on the same page with regard to blocking and enabling, with regard to how they can make the most of their learning time, with regard to how the are helping or not helping each other and themselves. What they liked was having some clear messages as a whole class about how they can help themselves and what appropriate behaviour is. I need to keep pursuing this. It’s a strength of what we have just achieved. I am wondering if they will deal with their sleep issues and their health and fitness. What they really liked was being able to give themselves a mark out of 10. In fact, they told me that is how they should assess themselves! They also like being able to say if they needed help or not and who would help them. The time frame was something that annoyed them. they didn’t want to have to say when so frequently they responded “as soon as possible.” I maybe need to look at that part of the self review to come up with something better. I now have to decide when to do the social capabilities. Probably next term. Ideally it should be personal capabilities in the first semester and social capabilities in the second semester. Next year I can start with this. If you click on the link, you can download a copy of the self review I made and use it for your own purposes.

Personal Capability goal setting Year 8

Goals for my subject and goals for other things

Having done the self-awareness review and then the self-management review it was quite straight forward and easy to do the goal setting. On the top of the sheet we set the goals for my subject area and on the bottom of the sheet I encouraged them to set goals for other things since they had mentioned so many other things in their self reviews. I have spent 3 sessions of about 25 minutes of class time on this. It’s a good class and we shall be able to make up the time. Not so sure that a subject area, which is already interrupted by other activities is the place for this but the national curriculum is not giving us a choice. Perhaps we need to look at how all these capabilities are actually going to be addressed in a subject area. Having said that, my Year 8s are so much clearer about how to manage themselves and their work now so it does have good value in terms of application and improvement. It has helped them to create a better sense of self and how to achieve and to ask better questions in class.