Join the Dots for Success.

My son, Declan, has just moved up to Year 4 in our local school.

As the children are growing up they are given more freedom and responsibility for their learning.

He came home from school this week and told me about the approach they take in some of his classes now.

He explained it as a “dot system”.

The children are given the choice of difficulty level of the work that they do.

A “3 dot” piece of work is the easiest, “2 dot” a bit more stretching and “1 dot” the most challenging.

I’m curious to know your initial thoughts to this approach.

Do you see it as a way to empower 8 and 9 year olds, or as a way for them to take “the easy option” every time?

I’d like you to take a moment and imagine that your children were to be given those options.

What would you want them to do?

Would you want them to take the easy option every time?

Would they be confident or complacent?

Would they achieve everything you would want for them?

How about if they took the hardest option every time?

Would they feel destroyed by failure if they found the tasks to difficult?

Would they give up after a while or would it teach them to strive for success?

What if they started to gain confidence with the easy tasks, built themselves up to achieve the more testing tasks and ended up confidently approaching those tasks that they used to find overwhelming?

What is it that you’d like your children to do?

I’m sure we all have a strong opinion on what our children “should” do for what would be “best for them”.

Now, once you have answers to those questions I’d like you to stop for a second and turn your thoughts back onto yourself.

Are you doing what’s best for you?

What do you do when it comes to the choices, decisions and tasks in life?

Do you stay in your comfort zone and just do the easy stuff?

Do you set yourself enough challenges to grow as a person and gain real satisfaction from your one and only life?

What one decision or life change could you make today that would have the greatest positive impact in your life?

Make the decision, take action and enjoy the rewards. Now award yourself two House Points and enjoy!