SEAL - Aiming High, Achieving Goals - Ide Primary School

Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning –
Theme 3
Every success story begins with a dream. We see ourselves winning X-factor,
being slim, getting the perfect job, becoming Prime Minister or successfully
completing that marathon. Sadly, not every dream ends in a success story.
Achieving our ambitions and goals depends on a number of skills and
qualities. We have to be able to motivate ourselves and to have a good plan
(breaking down the goal into manageable targets). We have to be able to
stick at it even when it’s hard (persistence) and learn to bounce back when
things go wrong (resilience). Without these skills, our goals will remain vague
dreams which we sit back and hope will ‘happen to us’ one day.
In this theme, children learn to take responsibility (when things turn out well
and when they don’t), to motivate themselves to set goals, to make a plan, to
think about overcoming obstacles, to keep going and to get over frustrations
and disappointment.
The skills and qualities developed through ‘Aiming High
and Achieving Goals!’ are not just important for school
learning – they are important throughout life, and also
highly valued by employers.
Helping your child to motivate themselves
We all want our children to motivate themselves (we
don’t want to be giving them stickers for getting out of
bed when they are grown-up!).
Let children choose their own goals – we are all more likely to stick at things
we really want to do.
Remember that we learn the same skills whatever the goal we set ourselves –
your child will learn as much from achieving the goal of mastering a
complicated skate-board manoeuvre as they will from having a goal to
improve their spelling. Luckily the skills are naturally generalised to other
areas of life.

Helping your child to keep going and to bounce back (to develop
persistence and resilience)
Persistence is the ability to grit our teeth and see something through to the
end.
To help your child to keep going for longer, set a period of
time with them to work on something – just a little bit more
each time (but remember it is hard to concentrate when we
are tired or stressed, to be flexible!). Use a sand-timer or
stopwatch so they can see their progress. Reward success
with praise and maybe on a chart that shows their progress.
Achieving a goal often means waiting for what we want, and not giving in to
the desire or impulse to do something more fun or immediately rewarding (to
‘delay gratification’). Look for occasions to praise them when they do do this,
and model doing it yourself.
Help your child to feel safe to try new things. Let them know that it doesn’t
matter if they get it wrong – always praise them for trying. If we ridicule or
punish children for their mistakes, they will not want to take a risk or try
something new – they will stick with what they know they can do.
Encourage your child to keep going when they feel bored or frustrated –
remind them to their goal (the big picture), encourage them to ‘just do five
minutes’ and see how they feel, or suggest that they take a break, do
something different and go back to it later.