All pathways for growth are created by me consciously leaving my comfort zone to welcome personal and academic challenges. I will need to be self-determined by having a strong sense of agency and feeling a healthy sense of autonomy, competence and connectedness.
Agency –do I believe that I have the power and will to master how I learn and achieve my goals for doing senior schooling?
Competence –do I feel that I have the personal and academic capabilities to succeed? If not, how can I develop them?
Autonomy –do I feel that it is my choice to be at school? If so, what is a personal challenge that I will need to succeed at? ...............................................................................................................
Acknowledgement: Sonja Lyubomirsky & Tal Ben Shahar
Connectedness –do I feel that my relationships with my parents, peers and teachers will support me? How can I develop them?
CHARACTER STRENGTHS WEEKS
There are six Strengths Weeks spread throughout this planner. They provide you and your class with opportunities to practise using your strengths to build a resilient state of wellbeing. They are also fun to do at home with your family. The order of these weeks are: Gratitude, Kindness, Bravery, Honesty, Creativity and Teamwork
From the website www.learningcurve.com.au download the Strengths Weeks sheets from Individual Resources/Character Strengths Weeks and the Wellbeing Awards Certificates from Individual Resources/Wellbeing Awards.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
INGREDIENTS OF PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC GROWTH
This Lesson: WHY: for you to believe that you have the will, power and environment in which to experience personal and academic growth. H0W: seek and welcome challenges that will stretch your abilities to learn and master new things. Pathways for Personal and Academic Growth: there are no shortcuts to any place worth going. Your current personal and academic bests are not going to cut it as you progress through senior schooling. Your bests have to keep getting better. Set a self-expectation for each of the following ingredients of personal and academic growth to actually live them.
Mindset – you believe that there is nothing about you that prevents you from continually getting better at getting better.
Self-Expectation: I will .........................................................................................................................................................................................
Self-Determination – your inner motivation to see opportunities and pathways for growth that you didn’t realise existed.
Self-Expectation: I will
Challenge – stretches you to drive your mindset towards growth to enjoy the effort of learning new things to get better.
Self-Expectation: I will .........................................................................................................................................................................................
Feedback – seeking information from the experts, your teachers, parents and trusted adults, to grow your abilities.
Self-Expectation: I will
Sense of Purpose – fuels your energy and to make a positive difference in the world; your purpose to grow your best.
Self-Expectation: I will
Character Strengths – your personal best ways to seek, welcome and overcome challenges to keep getting better.
Self-Expectation: I will .........................................................................................................................................................................................
Habits of Mind – your more intelligent ways to unlock challenges and make logical decisions which enable growth.
Self-Expectation: I will
Comfort Zone – you just keep doing easy and satisfying tasks that you are good at, which limits your opportunities to grow.
Self-Expectation: I will
Sleep – links all of the above ingredients together, because without it, none of them can exist on their own.
Self-Expectation: I will
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw
PERMAH+ = YOUR CIRCLE OF WELLBEING GROWTH
This Lesson: WHY: for you to understand that the six PERMAH+ elements combine to describe your all-round state of wellbeing to enable personal and academic growth, and that no single element on its own can do this. H0W: do the weekly PERMAH+ lesson to develop each of them in yourself to grow your wellbeing.
Positive Emotion + Gratitude
Feeling good by giving and being kind
Creating positive emotions, handling negative thoughts, and being grateful for how these benefit your personal and academic growth, respectful relationships and mental and physical wellbeing. What can you do to grow this element?
Health + Strengths
Being determined to be healthy
Developing the Big Five as habits to enable your thriving mental and physical health, and using your strengths to overcome challenges to grow. What can you do to grow this element?
Accomplishment + Optimism
Having the agency to influence your own future
Having optimism and hope by setting, striving for and accomplishing personal and academic goals, and deliberately practising to grow your brain’s abilities. What can you do to grow this element?
PERMAH+ is Your Circle of Wellbeing Growth
Engagement + Mindfulness
Paying attention to what you need to
Living your life with curiosity and zest to focus on what you need to do to accomplish your goals and pursue what you are passionate about to grow personally and academically. What can you do to grow this element?
Relationships + Empathy
Showing that other people matter to you
Developing the social and emotional skills to build and maintain respectful and caring relationships with others, and showing empathy for their needs and feelings and your own. What can you do to grow this element?
Meaning + Purpose
Having a meaningful purpose to make a positive difference
Identifying and focusing on something larger than yourself, which gives you a sense of meaning and purpose, and a reason for getting out of bed every morning. What can you do to grow this element?
Acknowledgement: Seligman & Peterson
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust
PRIORITIES / DUE DATES
EXPERIENCING YOU
WHY: possessing a self-image of what you want people to experience when they first meet you, will enable you to be master of how you communicate with and project yourself to them. Your challenge is to create and live a self-image which achieves this.
HOW: focus on being more aware of the body language messages that you unconsciously send, because they very clearly signify your intentions. Practise your body language and voice tones to ensure that you are projecting images and intentions which accurately reflect who you want them to experience.
Acknowledgement: Diener & Biswas-Diener
DO: share your thoughts about the image that you want others to experience when they first meet you.
Which of your personal strengths and attributes do you want to shine through?
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.” Leo Tolstoy
GRATITUDE WEEK
This week, enjoy making a positive difference to other peoples’ lives by creating activities using the strength GRATITUDE, to grow relationships with your family, friends, and school community.
(Gratitude Week worksheet and Gratitude Wellbeing Award are in Individual Resources on www.learningcurve.com.au)
Learn from students who studied your subjects last year; hindsight is gold.
GRATITUDE WEEK
Communication / Comments:
Teacher: Parent / Guardian:
/ DUE DATES
AWARE OF WASTED EFFORT
WHY: realising that advertising is distracting you from being grateful for what you have and wasting your efforts by wanting more “stuff”, will enable you to avoid this. Your challenge is to be aware of advertising.
HOW: the cost of personal and academic growth is sustained effort. When you become aware that you are wasting it, pause to give yourself self-awareness time, to start noticing and writing down the good things and people that you have in your life to fully appreciate them. Doing this will increase your resilience to not waste effort on advertising.
Acknowledgement: Emmons
DO: share your thoughts about how often you are wasting valuable effort on persistent advertising, instead of on personal and academic growth.
What is something you want, but don’t need?
”I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” Joan Didion
PROBLEM SOLVING
Measuring Water
(a) A gardener wanted to measure four litres of water out of a jug but only had a 5 litre and 3 litre container. How did he do it?
(b) How could he measure out one litre if he had only a 5 litre and a 2 litre container?
ACADEMIC GROWTH TIP
Spend time every day outdoors breathing fresh air and admiring nature.
Communication / Comments:
Teacher: Parent / Guardian:
TERM THREE PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC GOALS
This Lesson: WHY: for you to set three goals this term, one for improving your learning and thinking skills in class, one for building your respectful relationships, and one for what you want to achieve for yourself. HOW: for each of your goals, think about what you need to learn to overcome obstacles, who can help you and what strengths you will use. To create a logical visual representation of your goals, you may choose to use the Goals, Targets, Strategies, Obstacles, Learning Plan on page 131.
Who can help me to learn what I need to learn?
GOAL
COMPETENCE:
Improving my learning abilities. I will ....................................................................................................................................................................
Mark where I am now on achieving this goal:
By the end of Term mark where I can reach:
I will ....................................................................................................................................................................
Who can help me to learn what I need to learn?
GOAL
CONNECTEDNESS:
Connecting with others.
Mark where I am now on achieving this goal: By the end of Term mark where I can reach:
I will
Who can help me to learn what I need to learn?
GOAL
AUTONOMY:
Something to achieve for myself.
Mark where I am now on achieving this goal: By the end of Term mark where I can reach:
“Never settle for the line of least resistance.” Lee Ann Womack
PROGRESS TOWARDS PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC GOALS
GOAL
What did I learn about this goal that I am grateful for?
GOAL
What did I learn about this goal that I am grateful for?
GOAL
What did I learn about this goal that I am grateful for?
Acknowledgement: Sheldon & Adams Miller
“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.” Thomas Watson
MASTERY – FOCUS, FEEDBACK, FIX IT
This Lesson: WHY: for you to learn how to use the tried and proven 3F’s process, which leads to subject mastery and personal and academic growth. HOW: in every class, practise paying more attention, seeking feedback, and learning new approaches to fix your mistakes. Making this into a habit will lead to personal and academic growth in yourself.
FOCUS – is paying attention to what you need to pay attention to, and dismissing distracting thoughts from your mind (e.g. by putting your phone on flight mode). To stretch your brain, deliberately leave your comfort zone to tackle and practise more challenging tasks. What is something that you can do to focus more?
FEEDBACK – is asking teachers for feedback about extending your efforts, accepting that you should only succeed about 70% of the time when practising difficult tasks, and recognising that academic improvement comes from learning new things. What is something that you can do to seek more feedback?
FIX IT – is deliberately practising more logical and intelligent approaches that you have learnt from your teacher’s feedback to fix your mistakes. Knowing what you did wrong isn’t enough; you have to “do” to fix mistakes. What is something that you can do to fix the 30% you get wrong?
Acknowledgement: Ericsson, Coyle, Tversky
“I attribute my success to this; I never gave or took an excuse.” Florence Nightingale
EFFECTIVE MEMORY HABITS
This Lesson: WHY: for you to understand how your memory remembers what you learn, and how it develops through repetition, pattern, and control by regularly revising to enable personal and academic growth. HOW: practise the positive memory habits every day to embed them as keystone habits in your study routines and processes.
ABOUT YOUR MEMORY
» what you learn is moved from your short-term to long-term memory when you sleep
» if learned material is not reviewed within 24 hours, your brain forgets 60% to 80% of it
» after a month with no reviews, only 3% to 4% is remembered. Why learn it in the first place?
» if 50 minutes of learning is reviewed weekly, it takes 5 minutes to reactivate it in the brain
» if 50 minutes of learning is not reviewed regularly, then it takes 30 to 40 minutes to relearn it.
LEARNED MATERIAL REMEMBERED OVER TIME WHEN NOT REGULARLY REVIEWED/REVISED
REMEMBERED
LEARNED MATERIAL REMEMBERED OVER TIME WHEN REGULARLY REVIEWED/REVISED
EFFECTIVE MEMORY HABITS.
The following habits will store what you learn in your long-term memory:
» sip water often to help your brain’s functioning
» apply what you have learned to new and challenging situations
» rest your brain for 10 minutes every hour of study
» revise what you learned in each subject for 5 minutes nightly
» the next night, spend 3 or 4 minutes revisiting it
» use Thinking Tools to add structure and colour while studying
» on weekends, spend 3 minutes on each day’s learning
» after a fortnight, spend 3 minutes revisiting it to embed it.
What are you or could you be doing to develop these effective memory habits?
Which Thinking Tools from the website have you used to improve your memory?
The following are some tried and proven higher order Thinking Tools from the website: Points of the Compass; Connect, Extend, Challenge; Learning Jigsaw; Know, What, How, Learnt; Think, Pair, Share; Six Thinking Hats, and Creative Ripples
Acknowledgement: Guy Claxton
“If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn no one can stop you.” Zig Ziglar
