At Kilmoyle Primary School we focus on enabling our pupils to develop positive dispositions for learning and on teaching them how to be successful and reflective learners. We teach the Secrets of Success by Chris Quigley to help our children in their behaviour, attitudes and values.

What is success?

Success isn’t just about money. It is about happiness, choices and feeling good about yourself. Successful people feel good about:

• How hard they have tried.

• Who they are.

• What they spend their time doing.

• The choices they have in their lives.

Here are some things everyone should know…

• You are not born successful.

• Everyone has setbacks and failures.

• The first step to success is choosing…. “Do you want to be successful?”

1. Try new things

If you never try- you might never find things you are successful at. If you love what you are doing you get energy and are motivated. We all need to ensure children try new things, take risks, be creative, and give new things a go!

2. Work hard

We need to teach our children that whatever they choose to do in life – they do it to the very best of their ability. Success is not easy- there is no overnight success just hours and hours of work.

The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.  Work is GOOD. HARD work is even better! Successful people don’t make fun of work because they know it leads to success.

In fact, successful people have fun working.

3. Concentrate

Children need to tune out distractions – day dreaming, peer pressure etc. They need to learn to focus their attention on all the right things. They need to be clear about what they are doing and why. Once you are really clear about what you are doing, it is much easier to concentrate. If you really concentrate you can become an expert. Concentration that leads to success isn’t just about getting on with something- it is about doing the right things well!

 

4. Push yourself

Life isn’t easy. There will always be self-doubts and barriers- we need to teach our children to push past them and never give up. Parents and teachers need to push the children- nudging them every step of the way. Children also need to take responsibility for their own choices and actions and have the determination to ‘push past’ barriers and setbacks.

 

5. Imagine

We all need new ideas to help us to move on and progress. Inventions have revolutionised the world! Children need to try out, investigate, explore, improve and get better. They need to have confidence to voice their ideas. Children need to know that they can get better and can imagine how they will feel; what things will be like when they taste success. If you visualise something so strongly – your brain will work hard to make it happen. Getting the vision right can be very powerful. However, some children are put off because the distance to cover can look too great- and so just give up. What we need to do is to help them imagine small steps and aspire to get a bit better each week.

6. Improve

Opportunities to try things out and get better needs to be built in consistently over time. We are ensuring our children get lots of opportunities to reinforce their knowledge and consolidate their learning. Learning is not just about being taught something - it’s about using it again and again, getting better at it each time and making improvements by using the feedback they receive from their teacher and peers.

 

7. Understand others

To be successful you need to communicate and cooperate with others. Successful people don’t just think about themselves, they are good at listening to others, sharing ideas and making compromises. They can reflect on their work and actions. We need to teach our children about group dynamics, how to communicate and work with others productively.

8. Don’t give up

Even successful people suffer rejection and criticism. Children need to bounce back- they need to have self-worth and self-belief. We are teaching our children that ‘the barrier’ is not going to stop them- they just need to think of ways to get around it. We need to teach children to persist, to be resilient, to see where they went wrong, how to improve and bounce back!