Prep: Connie is Confident

1. Students will know what it means to be confident.
2. Students will recognise examples and non-examples of people being confident.

Everyone can learn to be confident. To start, you can practise standing up tall, using a strong voice and looking at people in the eye when you speak to them.

 Year 1: Persistent Thinking

1. Students will learn that when they have something difficult to do, or something that they do not enjoy doing, there are three ways of thinking that can make it a lot easier to be persistent and finish the task.

1. When you have hard schoolwork to do, it can help you to be persistent by thinking in one of three ways:
2. The harder I try, the more successful I will be.
3. To be successful, I have to do things that are hard or not fun to do.
4. I have done hard things before – I can do this.

Year 2: Task Persistence

1. Students will understand what persistence means.
2. Students will learn about three ways of thinking that help them to be persistent: Working Tough, Giving Effort and I Can Do It.

When you want to be as successful as possible at school, using helpful ways of thinking can help you to be persistent and more successful in the end. I Can Do It thinking helps you to be persistent when you are faced with setbacks, Working Tough thinking helps you to keep going on a task that is hard or boring, and Giving Effort thinking encourages you to put in your very best effort.

Year 3: How Hard is it Really?

1. Students will be able to categorise the difficulty level of different tasks (e.g. easy, hard, impossible).
2. Students will understand that exaggerating or ‘blowing up’ a task’s difficulty level can cause them to give up too quickly.
3. Students will be able to realistically judge the difficulty level of schoolwork.
4. Students will understand that an I Can Do It way of thinking can help them complete difficult tasks.
5. Students will be able to state how the Giving Effort way of thinking can help them complete difficult tasks.

When we exaggerate how difficult something is we make it much harder to be confident and persistent. Most of the things that students are expected to do at school are rarely, if ever, impossible, but often they are difficult. I Can Do It and Giving Effort thinking help you to be persistent in doing difficult schoolwork and other activities.

Year 4: Achieving Goals

1. Students will understand the importance of effort in overcoming distractions.
2. Students will be able to state the relationship between the Giving Effort way of thinking and their achievement of goals.

Everyone is faced with obstacles that can potentially prevent them from achieving their goals. To reach our goals, we must overcome obstacles. This requires a combination of Working Tough thinking and a great deal of effort.

Year 5: Hard Yakka – Getting It Done

1. Students will understand how hard work (‘hard yakka’) is a normal part of learning that requires persistence.
2. Students will be able to explain how the Working Tough way of thinking can help encourage them to do work they find to be hard yakka.

Hard work – ‘hard yakka’ – is work that students can find time-consuming and in which they have a low level of interest. While schools try to reduce the amount of hard yakka, it is something that all students need to persist with and complete. When you have something that you find to be hard yakka, it doesn’t mean you are stupid, the teacher is stupid or school is stupid. Just as athletes have to practise, practise and practise doing hard yakka in order to improve, so do students – Work Tough!

Year 6: Self-Motivation for Doing What You Don’t Feel Like Doing

1. Students will understand that it is common to feel unmotivated about work in some classes.
2. Students will know that when they do not feel like doing schoolwork, there are strategies they can use to begin and complete their work.

It is quite common to lack persistence when having work to do that is not in your area of interest. Nevertheless, it is important to do your personal best in these classes as well as those you are more interested in. By organising your work time so you work when you are most rested, using lots of motivating self-talk and reminding yourself of the benefits of starting and completing the work and the disadvantages of putting the work off, you can be more persistent and successful.