Skills for Growing Unit 3

There are five major units, each focusing on a different theme and specific skills. The themes are repeated at each grade level. Each unit contains an introductory activity and four to six lessons offering classroom activities for an entire school year.

Skills for Growing was our study for the first two weeks of Term 4. It was a focus on Unit 3, Making Positive Decisions. It encourages the children to consider the choices open to them, make a positive decision and enjoy the good consequences.

·         Unit 1 ‘Building a School Community;

·         Unit 2 ‘Growing as a Group’

·         Unit 3 ‘Making Positive Decisions’

·         Unit 4 ‘Growing up Healthy’

·         Unit 5 ‘Celebrating You and Me’

Given the thousands of decisions we make every day, all having consequences that can create positive or negative results, skills to improve this capability might be considered fundamental to a productive life. Learning decision skills provides the opportunity to increase positive outcomes while decreasing the consequences of failure that are part of the learning process.

What skills are important to decision making?

Decision making skills is gaining knowledge to make our choices more effective. Skills include:

• Using a process that provides a consistent set of steps leading to a decision outcome.  
• Discovery and creativity skills that can help identify alternatives.
• Imagination used to envision possible future consequences.
• Information, data gathering, and observation methods that assist evaluations.
• Assessment of risk to the likelihood of outcomes
• Collaboration, communication and listening needed for decision making.
• Self discipline that motivates commitment and action for a chosen solution;
• Time and task management needed for successful implementation.

How can decision making skills be improved?

Choices we make every day present us with daily opportunity to improve our skill in making decisions. Many of these choices are made out of habit, but just bringing these selections to a conscious level can enable self reflection that can be used to improve these and other decisions.

Improving decision skills will come from the learning gained from experiencing the consequences of making poor decisions. However, for high value decisions with significant consequences, we would like to have developed these skills in advance in order to avoid disastrous outcomes to the extent possible.

Decision making games provides one such environment, providing the opportunity to develop skill with exploration and projecting likely outcomes based on probabilities. Simulations can provide experiences that enable improved coping. They can also help address one of the challenges with complex decision making problems.

Building skills that last

Decisions define our future. They often come in a series of connected decisions and encourage us to think about what will come next. Decision making skills cross all disciplines and are transferrable to any job, career, or vocation. A focus on these fundamental skills should be considered essential to any meaningful education.

We make thousands of decisions a day. Making a choice is easy. Choosing well takes knowledge and skill.

 Here are some publicised suggestions, many related to our Skills for Growing decision making process, of how positive outcomes can result from good decisions. Our school children are generally well versed in good decision making procedures some clearly verbalising the main steps.

A logical and systematic decision-making process helps you address the critical elements that result in a good decision. By taking an organised approach, you're less likely to miss important factors.

There are six steps to making an effective decision

Step 1: Create a constructive environment

To create a constructive environment for successful decision making, make sure you do the following:

·         Establish the objective 

·         Agree on the process 

·         Involve the right people

·         Allow opinions to be heard 

Step 2: Generate Good Alternatives

This step is still critical to making an effective decision. The more good options you consider, the more comprehensive your final decision will be .When you generate alternatives, you force yourself to dig deeper, and look at the problem from different angles.
Ways of doing this could be by brainstorming, writing ideas, listing alternatives or doing bubble maps.

Step 3: Explore the Alternatives

When you're satisfied that you have a good selection of realistic alternatives, then you'll need to evaluate the feasibility, risks, and implications of each choice. The children could do this by using de Bonos Hats, using Plus/Minus/Interesting(PMI’s) or Decision Trees using mapping skills, all of which are familiar to our pupils.

Step 4: Choose the Best Alternative

After you have evaluated the alternatives, the next step is to choose between them. The choice is usually quite obvious.

Step 5: Check Your Decision

 This is where you look at the decision you're about to make dispassionately, to make sure that your process has been thorough, and to ensure that common errors haven't crept into the decision-making process. It is usually intuitive by methodically testing ideas used against own personal experiences.

Step 6: Communicate Your Decision, and Move to Action!

Once you've made your decision, it's important to explain it to those affected by it, and involved in implementing it.

Here are some stories related to decision making by selected Year 5 children.

                                            Decision making

Some day in life you will come to a point where you have to make a decision.  There can be good and bad decisions so that’s why you have to think carefully about what decision you make.
Decisions can help you make friends and helps you not get into trouble. If you make the wrong decision and do something wrong there could be a bad consequence coming your way. Like being grounded.
There are choices in decisions and if you make the right choice your self-esteem will get higher. In life decisions can help you a lot. 
Remember there are good and bad consequences. So I hope you try and get the good consequences.
Always make the right decision in life. Who knows where it could get you. 

By Lucy

                  Decision Making.

Decisions are great because you have choices to make.
You can have good decision and bad decisions that lead to bad things.
Good decisions lead to good things. Good decisions are great because they help.
Bad decisions are not so good.

By Connor

           A Negative Decision 

   Once my dad let me drive. So I drove very slowly to the end of the road. Then I had to turn around.  My dad then put the car in reverse.
 Suddenly I noticed the car was rolling back. In a panic I hit the accelerator. But it was still in reverse so the car went flying into a ditch.
When I was in the ditch I couldn’t think straight. But then I noticed what happened.
So I guess the moral of the story is never let a ten year old drive!

    By Oliver Meikle