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Success Is
A Thinking Skill
SIATS Overview
Success is a Thinking Skill is a curriculum designed to elicit the thinking processes necessary for productive living. The thinking skills include self-evaluation, viewing self and situations constructively, and thinking about how others think. Project planning require students to think ahead. Students consider problems before they happen, devise solutions, connect behavior and results, and define their present success. In the process of the exercises and activities, students make decisions, solve problems, and use reason. The exercise content involves skills for sociability, self-management, and actions of integrity.
Exercise Manual
The Exercise Manual is the core of Success is a Thinking Skill.
The Exercise Manual consists of five units – Learning, Work, Integrity, Common Sense, and Making Decisions.
Notice that students describe themselves positively as they answer the questions. For example, the exercise on page
A9 in the Learning Unit concludes with the question, “When is it OK for someone to tell you what to do?"
Sequence of the Exercise Manual Units
The sequence of the Exercise Manual units is consistent. The order of each unit is a self-evaluation questionnaire, the exercises, the questionnaire repeated, and projects planning. A self-evaluation questionnaire begins each unit. The following exercises are based on the questionnaire topics. After the exercises, the self-evaluation questionnaire is repeated. Then, the students select and make a plan of action to apply an interest to daily living.
Self-evaluation Questionnaires
The self-evaluation questionnaires require students to give simple YES and NO answers. Regardless of their answers, the students use self-evaluation skills. Next, the students circle plus and minus signs to indicate if what the questions ask is important to them. They continue to use self-evaluation skills.
Exercises
The unit exercises expand the topics of the self-evaluation questionnaires. The exercises utilize teaching strategies that are adapted for thinking skills.
For example, the questionnaires use YES and NO answers to elicit simple self-evaluation skills. In the exercises, students rate answers 1-2-3-4 and YES, NO or SOMETIMES/MAYBE. They expand self-evaluation skills to serial rankings.
As another example, students answer questions and discover their strengths. The discovered strengths are then used in the content of the exercise. On page B of the Work Unit, students describe how they relate to their best friends. After the students recognize how they relate successfully, they think about how these skills are used in the workplace.
Project Selection
Ask the students to select a project to plan that relates to the unit content. Be lenient about the selection of projects. The objective is for students to think ahead and to engage in the various skills that are necessary to complete plans.
Honor student selections even though some project titles may seem unrealistic. Some students may be new at thinking ahead and will start with plans that seem unrealistic to teachers who deal with their present performance.
If a student lists a project title that is a long-range goal. Honor the selection for motivation. Hint. Ask the student to list an obstacle and solution. Stop. Swing the listed solution to the project title column. The solution is now the title of a new plan. List another obstacle and solution. Again, swing the solution to the project title column. Continue this procedure until the project is an immediate short-range plan (goal).
For example, a low achieving student entitles a project “to be a lawyer.” Honor the aspiration. Keep the title for a long-range goal. Refine the project for immediate action. Suppose the first solution is to “get an education”. Swing “get an education” into the project title column for another plan. The next solution may be “pass all my subjects”. Again, swing the solution, “pass all my subjects”, into the project title column. Now the plan is entitled “pass all my subjects” with the original goal still intact.
An exercise, which exemplifies the procedure above, is on page D8 of the Common Sense Unit.
Project Planning
Students write the titles of their projects in the positive. Project titles describe images that can be pictured in the mind. Negatively stated projects result in a void or vacuum. Obstacles are determining problems before they happen. Solutions are creative. Rewards are the results of either solutions or projects and connect behavior and results. “If I do so and so, this will happen.” Progress to date recognizes partial success and is recorded at the beginning of each project or plan.
Remember again, the process of thinking ahead is the objective of project planning.
Leadership Manual
The Leadership Manual details activities that utilize exercises from the Exercise Manual. A Table of Contents page introduces each unit in the Exercise Manual. Beside the unit topics are listed exercise pages (on the right side) and related activities in the Leadership Manual (on the left side).
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