Coaching children towards their targets - Part 1

Firstly, a big thanks to Run Fun Starz Group for inviting me to guest blog!

For this blog, I've chosen a topic that's close to my heart. I've worked with children for over 20 years – teaching, mentoring, and more recently coaching. But I don't mean coaching in the 'sports coach' sense, although the style of coaching I use is derived from sports coaching (see Tim  Gallwey's “The Inner Game of Tennis”).

The link you could add here could be:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-Game-Tennis-W-Timothy-Gallwey/dp/0330295136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299001907&sr=1-1 (which I've used from Amazon)

Having coached teachers and head teachers for several years on areas of personal performance at work, I was intrigued by how the performance coaching tools and techniques used with adults could be applied to children and their school targets.

School targets

All children have some sort of targets to work towards, whether these be end of year targets, termly, half-termly or weekly ones. These are usually curriculum or behaviour-based. The ones I was initially interested in were behaviour targets, which led to a pilot study with a group of teachers.

The study

A group of 6 teachers, who I'd trained in coaching skills, used these skills as part of their work with children who had been identified as having special educational needs for behaviour.  Some key things to mention here:

1.    The aim of the study was to support the children towards:

- greater self-awareness

- taking accountability for their own behaviour / learning

- developing their own solutions to problems

2.    The children were encouraged to come up with their own targets using coaching techniques and models – even if they originally had been given targets for the term by their class teacher. This resulted in greater target ownership, and accountability.

3.    The coaching approach was never intended to replace the teacher's existing methods for helping these children, merely to enhance what they were already doing.

The study provided us with positive results and measurable progress over a 2-term period. The work continues, but I will leave you with a few starting points if you're interested in maximising children’s performance towards their targets (curriculum or behaviour).

Getting started ...

Ask the right questions

Encourage the child to come up with their own target, using questions such as:

·         What would you like to get better at this term?

·         What would be a good target for (maths / your behaviour, etc.) which would help you over the next 6 weeks?

·         If you could pick a really great target to work on, to help with your (co-ordination skills / literacy work), what would that be?

The last question is more advanced and perhaps better for children who are more familiar with the concept of personal targets.

Create a picture

Help the child to visualise what achieving their target will look like.

·         How will they feel when they achieve it?

·         What will people notice about them that will be different?

·         What could their friends / other teachers be saying about them when they've achieved it?

Set time scales

This will depend on the age of the child, the size of the target and what else is going on for the child. Share with them your thoughts on when would be a realistic deadline and why you think this is the case. For example, there may be class targets to achieve by the end of the year / term, which are linked with their target. Or you may believe they have set themselves a small target that could be achieved quickly. However, my experience has shown me that children will often go for big targets!

Happy target-setting, and let me know how you get on!

By Debbie Inglis

Director
Square Two Development Ltd
01629 706 100
0779 161 0215
www.squaretwo.co.uk
Twitter: @squaretweet (businesses)
Twitter: @TeachersCoachUK or @HTcoach (schools)