Life Success
For Students With Learning Disabilities:
A Teacher Guide

Self-Awareness: Secondary Grades

Introductory Activity

As you introduce 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 your subject matter curriculum.  Reinforce and refer to each attribute using “teachable moments” throughout the period.  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

• 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 to the class to talk about their experiences - both struggles and triumphs.

Extension Activities

Whole-Class Comparison

• Have students line up on a continuum in relation to how much they like certain activities (sports, drama, surveys, leading/being led, talker/listener, etc.).
• After each activity, have them rearrange themselves based on whether they like to actively participate or passively watch the activity.

Strengths, Non-Strengths, Preferences

• Put a chart on the board with two columns marked “What I Like” and “What I’m Good At.”

• Have students fold a piece of paper down the middle and write the above as headings for each column.
• Think aloud/write examples in each column.
• Draw lines connecting the columns when a match is observed.
• Make two more columns marked “What I Don’t Like” “What I’m Not Good At.” Students turn over their papers and write the headings.
• Go through the think-aloud, writing descriptors and drawing matches between the columns.
• Ask for observations from the class.

Self-Awareness Scale
(Use the “Rate Yourself” worksheet available in the Activities Worksheets section)

• Use Likert scales of realms of behavior
• Divide students into partners.
• Have students:

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

“Imagine Me , Imagine You ”
(Use the “Imagine Me, Imagine You" worksheet available in the Activities Worksheets section) 

• Divide students into partners.

• Pass out the “How Do You See Yourself” worksheet and have students fill in the mirrors with words, pictures, or symbols of how they think other people see them.
• Have them respond to the three questions.
• Have students share and compare with a partner.