Life Success
For Students With Learning Disabilities:
A Teacher Guide

Self-Awareness: Elementary Grades

Introductory Activity

As you introduce the attribute self-awareness, prepare a chart entitled “Keys to Success.”  (Leave space as you will be adding more attributes to the chart later.)  Have the class define “self-awareness” in their own words.  Post word cards, posters, and lists brainstormed and created through classroom activities.  Review at the beginning of each day or class period and infuse through the curriculum.  Reinforce and refer to each attribute using “teachable moments” throughout the school day.  Have students find examples of success attributes in current events, news stories, TV programs, peer experiences, and their own experiences, and create a bulletin board with the appropriate attribute as a label.

General Activities

The general activities below are intended to develop and personalize students’ understanding of themselves and their individual strengths and weaknesses.  They can be carried out as whole-group activities, in small groups or even with individual students, and can be woven into various subject-matter curricula throughout the day, and across settings.

• Work with students to develop and discuss lists of their individual strengths, weaknesses, and special talents.
• Have students choose potential careers that best match their abilities and discuss their choices.
• Bring adults with LD into your classroom to talk about their experiences - both struggles and triumphs.

Extension Activities

The activities below are designed for the most part to be conducted as whole-class activities that extend understanding and offer further reinforcement of self-awareness, as well as to provide teachers with opportunities to assess students’ progress.

Whole-Class Comparison

Have children line up by height, hair color, most/least talkative, most/least physically active, friendly, courteous, funniest, most artistic, computer-wise, etc.

• Stay away from academics and value-laden areas such as “popularity”
• Discuss differences along various attributes with the whole class

Interest Inventory
(Use the “Interest Inventory” worksheet available in the Activities Worksheets section)

• Have students fill out the interest inventory.
• Read the items aloud if necessary.
• Divide students into partners and have them discuss/share/compare interests.
• As a whole-group activity, ask
• Whose partner had an unusual interest?
• Who had common interests?
• What have you learned about yourself?
• What have you learned bout your classmates?

Collage of Realms of Behavior

• List realms of behavior on the board (e.g., social self, physical self, creative, academic, spiritual/moral self).
• Divide students into tables of small groups.
• Have students look through magazines and cut and paste pictures that represent them in each realm.
• Have students describe their collage to table mates.
• Have whole-group discussion/sharing by table.

Rating Yourself on Realms of Behavior
(Use the “Rate Yourself” worksheet available in the Activities Worksheets section)

Divide students into partners.  Read the items aloud if necessary.

• Have students:

• Rate self.
• Rate partner.
• Compare the two ratings.
• Discuss with partner.
• Discuss with whole class.

Strengths and Non-Strengths

• Read/discuss stories and/or films about individuals with learning disabilities.
• Display a large sheet of paper with the outline of a person drawn on it.
• Have students identify strengths/weaknesses of the individuals they read about.
• Write strengths in one color and weaknesses in another color on the figure.  (Example:  “good speaker” would be written next to mouth.)
• Give students their own (8 x 10) outline of a student and ask them to write their own strengths/weaknesses in different colors.
• For homework, assign to take the picture home and discuss it with their parents. Being in the home rather than the school environment may trigger new realizations, so that students may want to add to/subtract from the picture at that time.