Skills
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Reg. No.: 2011/011959/07
Life Skills
Study guide
Grade 5
CAPS aligned
LM van der Walt
SAMPLE
LESSON ELEMENTS
LEARNING AIMS
What the learner should know at the end of the lesson. Taken from CAPS.
IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGY
New terminology to extend understanding of the subject as part of the lesson.
ACTIVITY
Formative assessment to test the learner’s progress and knowledge of the lesson completed.
SAMPLE
PREFACE
Welcome to Grade 5!
The subject of Life Skills contributes to your overall development. It is the centre of your holistic development. It equips you to reach their full potential on a physical, intellectual, personal, emotional, and social level. You will be equipped with knowledge and skills to help you to function as a well-rounded individual in society. The subject encourages you to develop life skills that will enable you to effectively deal with the onslaughts of society. You are also encouraged to play an active and responsible role in society.
Life Skills the subject comprises three sections:
• Personal and Social Well-being (PSW)
• Physical Education (PE)
• Creative Arts (CA) – Performing Arts and Visual Arts
In this study guide, the three sections flow together. The PE activities are not found at the back of the study guide but are included in each term’s work. You can adjust the lesson content at your own discretion, but you must ensure that ALL the work is completed during the term. You and your facilitator can adapt the lesson content as you see fit, but you have to ensure that ALL the work is covered during the term. If you, for example, want to do PE more than once a week, you can.
Personal and Social Well-being teaches you how to behave in the relationship between yourself and your environment and your community. It gives you the life skills to make informed decisions regarding everyday life. It includes decision about your personal lifestyle, health, and social wellbeing.
It will help you deal with difficult situations. It mainly focuses on three topics:
SAMPLE
• Self-development
• Health and environmental responsibility
• Social responsibility
Physical Education, on the other hand, focuses on physical development. You will learn about healthy eating and exercise habits to boost your health and fitness
The last part is Creative Arts. This exposes you to dance, drama, music and visual arts. It helps you develop and expand your creativity. Visual Arts focuses on the following three aspects:
• Visual literacy
• Designs in 2D
• Designs in 3D
All the formal assessments can be found in the portfolio book.
UNIT 1:
Personal and social well-being
LEARNING AIMS
After completing this unit, you should be able to do the following:
• Know what influence other people have on your self-esteem and self-esteem development.
INTRODUCTION
SAMPLE
• Be aware of how personal success contributes to a positive self-esteem.
• How to set up a plan of action for continuous positive selfesteem development.
• How to handle feedback from others, as well as how to give feedback to others.
• Know how to handle different emotions.
• Apply skills to effectively manage emotions.
• Appreciate friends in difficult times.
• Distinguish between safe and unsafe relationships with other people.
Your self-esteem is particularly important, because it determines how you feel about yourself. It also plays an important role in how you treat others. Your self-esteem determines whether you will be successful in whatever you undertake. The feedback you get from others can be positive or negative. It is important to handle the feedback correctly. You must also know how to give feedback to other people in the correct way. It is therefore important for the learner to receive the necessary guidance.
Emotions are very important in this phase of your life. Your emotions are sensitive and sometimes you feel confused. It is therefore important for you to know how to correcty manage and express emotions. During difficult times, it is important to be able to count on friends.
Lastly, we are going to look at relationships with other people. You should be able to distinguish between bad and good relationships. These experiences can help you later in life with decisions about relationships.
IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGY
• Self-esteem: What you think of yourself.
• Ambition: The desire you have to achieve and be successful.
• Self-respect: To believe in yourself and to not do things that would harm you.
• Determination: Someone who does not give up, who keeps going regardless of the circumstances.
• Feedback: Information someone gives you to let you know whether you did something well or badly. You can also give others feedback about their actions.
• Strategy: Working out a plan of action.
• Emotions: The feelings you have, for example anger, sadness, happiness, etc.
• Sympathy: When you feel sorry for someone else.
Lesson 1: Positive self-esteem development
Recommended resources: study guide as well as posters and books about the topic
1.1 The influence others have on self-esteem: adults and friends
Your self-esteem is the image you have of yourself. This includes:
• Your social character
Are you sociable? Are you shy? Are you self-assured?
SAMPLE
• Your physical appearance Are you tall?
Are you overweight?
Are you pretty?
• Your thoughts Are you positive or negative?
Are you happy?
Can you make choices easily?
Your self-esteem is your understanding of your own, unique characteristics. However, your own view of yourself is not the only influence on your self-esteem. Things other people say about us and how other people treat us also influence our self-esteem. People who damage or boost your self-esteem include the following:
• Your family
What does your family expect from you?
Does your family support you or criticise you?
Do you sometimes feel that you do not live up to your family’s expectations?
• Your friends and peer group
Do they sometimes make you feel inferior?
Do you feel that you are not as strong/pretty/clever as the others?
Do your friends accept you for who you are?
• Media
The media puts pressure on teenagers to act and look a certain way.
Do you feel fat and ugly compared to the perfect movie stars? That is the media’s mission. They advertise products promising they will make you feel better about yourself.
• School expectations
You might feel that your school and teachers’ expectations of you are too high. It makes you feel stressed and when you cannot meet their expectations, you feel like a failure.
ACTIVITY 1
1. Make a list of any FIVE things people have told you that influenced your selfesteem negatively.
2. Discuss how it made you feel with your facilitator/friend/parent.
SAMPLE
3. How did you handle these situations? Discuss it with your facilitator/friend/parent.
1.2 Personal successes as a contributing factor to positive self-esteem
Before you can achieve success, you must have good self-esteem. A successful person feels good about himself/herself because he/she has reached their goals. You must work at good self-esteem. The following elements can contribute to it:
• Stand and walk with good posture. It will immediately make you feel better about yourself.
• Learn from your mistakes and make positive improvements.
• Cultivate a positive attitude to life.
• Love yourself.
• Spend time with people who encourage you and influence your positively.
• Live healthily – eat the right foods and exercise regularly.
• Treat yourself by doing something fun from time to time.
If you look at the most successful people around you, you will note that all of them have certain characteristics. It makes them more likely to achieve success than other people. These characteristics are:
• The dedication to keep to your plan for success.
• The ambition to achieve and do things better than other people.
• The application of good problem-solving techniques to find solutions to problems.
• They believe in themselves and have a lot of self-respect
• Successful people are determined and do not quit.
• Successful people can make good decisions quickly
• Successful people are not scared of new situations and are very brave.
When you feel good about yourself, your chances of achieving everything you want is greater. Being successful also makes you feel good about yourself.
ACTIVITY 2
1. Make a list of at least FIVE of your characteristics you think will help you be successful.
2. Make a list of at least FIVE characteristics you would like to have.
3. How would you go about getting the characteristics you named in 2?
4. Discuss your answers with your friends/facilitator or parent.
ACTIVITY 3
1. Use your answers in Activity 2, Question 1 and make a collage of your positive characters that will contribute towards your success.
2. Use photographs or pictures from magazines to make your collage.
1.3 Plan of action for continuous positive self-esteem development
SAMPLE
You are not going to feel the same every day. Some days you feel positive and other days you feel extremely negative. It is therefore important to continuously work on your selfesteem, even if you do not always feel positive. That is why it is important to compile a plan of action to motivate you. Let us look at self-motivation first
What is self-motivation?
It is the ability to do the things you need to do without other people’s influence. People with self-motivation can find the reason and strength to complete a task on their own, even when it is a challenge, or they do not have the encouragement of others.
How can I become self-motivated?
• Focus on what you enjoy doing.
• Make a list of things you want to improve and how you are going to do so.
• Review all the successes you have already achieved.
• Reward yourself for each success you achieve.
• Read inspiring books.
• Set yourself goals.
• If you feel negative and lose hope, contact a friend who can encourage you.
Let us compile a PLAN OF ACTION to help you continuously develop and build your selfesteem in a positive way:
1. Find your strengths What can you do very well?
Of which recent successes are you very proud?
2. Cultivate a positive attitude about yourself
Say positive things about yourself to yourself. Believe that you will be successful.
3. Work on your weaknesses
Identify your weaknesses.
Compile a plan to change these into strengths.
4. Do not fear new challenges
Be positive about each new challenge, even if it is very difficult. New challenges teach us how to do new things.
ACTIVITY 4
1. Make a list of all your strengths.
2. Make a list of all your successes.
3. Compile a plan of action for yourself.
4. Put the lists somewhere where you can see it every day.
5. Remind yourself every day that you are going to become a successful person!
SAMPLE
1.4
Read about activities and actions that promote positive self-esteem
Read the article.
You are in charge of your self-esteem
Although it is a fact that a large part of your self-esteem is formed by what other people think of you, you do not always have to wait for your parents, teachers or friends to say something positive to you. Ultimately, you are the only one who can determine how you really feel about yourself.
Celebrate your victories
You know yourself the best. You know what you are afraid of or when you finally get something right that you could not do before. It does not always have to be a huge achievement such as getting full marks for a test. Celebrate your smaller achievements too, like telling a joke that made your friends laugh or the cricket game your team won.
You do not always need a pat on the back, but writing down your achievements in your diary every day is a good habit. Whenever you have a bad day or feel your confidence slipping, read your diary to remind yourself of everything you have achieved.
Love your looks
Have you ever watched a movie and wished you looked like one of the main characters? Or stared at your friend’s profile picture on WhatsApp and wished you also had perfect hair?
The truth is that all is not as it seems. There are many apps available to edit and retouch photographs, making it easy to turn the most normal looking person’s photograph into one fit for a magazine cover! Imagine how boring it would be if everyone looked the same.
SAMPLE
Take a look at your family the next time you are unhappy with your body or appearance. Your genes play a significant role in your looks. If your mother or father are tall, you will most likely also be tall. While your friends may envy you your height, you may feel like a giant if you always have to stand at the back when some takes a group photo That one trait that embarrasses you, is the same one that shows that you belong to a tall family.
Building a good self-esteem is your responsibility. Turn every ‘cannot’ into a ‘can’. Everyone is good at one thing at least – all you need to do is find that one thing.
ACTIVITY 5
Answer the following questions.
1. Who is the most important person responsible for your self-esteem?
2. Name two things you can do to improve your self-esteem.
3. Name at least one thing you are really good at.
4. Name at least one personal feature or trait that you really like.
5. Do you take after your mother or father? Why do you say so?
The following is a case study:
Hester is a good hockey player. She does well in her school’s hockey games. She wants to make the Gauteng team. She has not made the team yet, but this year she is determined to reach her goal. She practises extremely hard every day. She gets up early every morning and practises on the hockey field before school Apart from her regular practice at school, she has extra practice sessions three afternoons a week. She also takes part in weekend games.
Hester must be very organised and disciplined. She also makes time for her schoolwork and school tasks. She also has lots of fun with her friends in her free time. She is indeed very disciplined. She eats healthily and gets enough sleep, because the practice and exercise require a lot of energy. Hester says she is a lot more focused since she set her goal. It helps her to reach her dream.
ACTIVITY 6
Answer the following questions.
1. What is Hester’s special talent?
2. Which goal did Hester set herself?
3. Name Hester’s strengths.
4. What can you learn from Hester?
Lesson 2: Give and receive feedback
Recommended resources: study guide, newspaper articles and magazines
2.1 Suitable ways of giving and receiving feedback: positive and negative feedback
SAMPLE
Feedback is the information we get from people around us. It is the way in which someone tells us how well did a task. Feedback is important because it gives you the information you need to know where you went wrong and how you can improve on it. It can help you plan. It motivates you, so you can do your best.
Read the following case study. Mareli and Kesha are in the same class. Mr Fourie gives the class a task about the Industrial Revolution. Mareli and Kesha decide to work on it together, as a group. Kesha is a perfectionist and criticises Mareli’s work all the time. Nothing Mareli contributes to the task is good enough. Mareli gets despondent and decides she does not want to work with Kesha anymore. Mareli does the task on her own, but does not tell Kesha. On the day they must hand in the task, Kesha hands in a half-completed task and Mareli hands in a completed task. Kesha is very unhappy and no longer wants to be friends with Mareli.
ACTIVITY 7
Answer the following questions.
1. Do you think Kesha acted correctly when they started working on the task?
2. Do you think Mareli could have handled the situation better?
3. Why were Kesha’s feelings hurt?
4. What did you learn about feedback from the case study?
Some people are very sensitive and do not react well to feedback, especially if they feel that they are being criticised. Therefore, you should consider how you give feedback to ensure that is received positively. You must never belittle someone – that is not constructive feedback. The feedback you give should be helpful for the person receiving it. It should serve as motivation to improve.
How can I give someone positive feedback?
• Always speak positively. Do not focus on what the person cannot do only, but also on the things that the person does well.
• Speak clearly and be specific with your feedback.
• Do not criticise the person, but his/her actions or the task that was completed.
• Try to give the person advice on how to improve certain aspects.
• You must always treat the person in such a way that they retain their dignity and feel respected.
ACTIVITY 8
1. Think of something you and your friend(s) did together recently, like playing rugby.
2. Think about the mistakes you made.
3. If you were the captain/leader of the team/group, how would you give positive feedback?
SAMPLE
Of course, it is much easier to give feedback than to receive it. Maybe you feel scared when someone gives you feedback on something you have done. Maybe you get angry when someone points out something you can improve on. Feedback is important because it helps you know where to improve. If you do not get your test marks back, how would you know what you got right and what you got wrong? It is important that you learn to handle different types of feedback.
What is the right way for me to handle feedback?
• You must be willing to ask for feedback. Do not be afraid of the outcome.
• Do not be angry with the person. It will not help if you get nasty.
• Listen to the person’s advice and try it out the next time you do something.
• If you feel that the feedback is unfair, discuss it.
• Appreciate all feedback you receive. It will help you become more successful.
ACTIVITY 9
1. For the rest of the day, be more aware of feedback you receive.
2. Also, be more aware of your reaction to the feedback.
3. Do you think you handled it appropriately?
4. If you think you need to improve the way you handle feedback, what changes would you make?
ACTIVITY 10
Study the following picture and answer the questions.
1. Which type of feedback is represented in the photograph?
2. How do you think the girl in the foreground feels?
3. What is the best way for her to handle the feedback?
4. Do you think this type of feedback is constructive?
2.2 Read about appropriate ways of giving and receiving feedback
Negative, positive and constructive feedback
SAMPLE
Someone’s words can be wonderful or terrible. Sometimes you remember it forever. Deconstructive comments (like the time when the ballet teacher said you dance like a duck), but also positive critique (like when your teacher wrote such good remarks about your essay), can be with you forever.
You are always going to have opinions about people and what they do, just like others are always going to have something to say about you. It is part of life and although it sometimes hurts, it is an essential skill to master. How else are you going to do better in sport or schoolwork? If you learn to manage criticism now, you will not want to simply quit your job the first time your boss gives you a negative feedback.
How to give feedback
Feedback is when someone receives or gives an opinion about someone else or something someone else did. It is supposed to be ideas for improvement, or just to recognise performance or growth. Unfortunately, not everyone always provides feedback the way they would like to receive it ...
Below are examples of negative feedback and ideas for how you can change that same criticism into something positive.
‘You dance like a duck.’
Destructive: This is a general statement that attacks the person without explaining exactly what is wrong.
Constructive: ‘Your balance is good, but your posture needs work.’ Why is it better? You first give compliments before you suggest improvements.
‘Yes, the earth is flat.’
Destructive: Perhaps you’re trying to not hurt your friend’s feelings, but in the end it’s destructive if you don’t help him. Just imagine how everyone will laugh if your friend says it at a party.
Constructive: ‘Long ago, people thought the earth was flat, but today we know it is round.’ Why is it better? Just like you, your friends must also learn to accept the correct facts if they are wrong. By admitting that people once believed the earth was flat, you acknowledge the reason why he believes it, but rather tell him that his facts are false, to avoid any embarrassment.
And if you are the one to receive negative feedback?
Take a deep breath when someone gives you negative feedback. Even if someone gives harsh feedback, there might be merit in what they are saying. Look for the positives and see where you can improve.
ACTIVITY 11
1. What is criticism?
2. How do you handle criticism?
3. Which of the tips provided would you apply in your own handling of criticism?
4. Do you think it is true that you cannot always be right?
SAMPLE
Lesson 3: Dealing with emotions
Recommended resources: study guide as well as articles, reports and books on handling emotions
3.1 Skills to manage emotions positively
We experience many different emotions in our lives: empathy, compassion, disappointment, and sadness. Your emotions can sometimes make you act inappropriately. It is important for your emotional development to learn to handle your emotions correctly. You will be able to handle any situation with a reasonable measure of self-confidence if you can control your emotions. There are emotions such as joy and excitement that we like and deal with easily, but negative emotions such as sadness is a slightly more difficult to deal with
Negative emotions sometimes make you act inappropriately. Maybe you become confrontational when you are sad. Negative emotions are part of life and you cannot be happy all the time That is why you need to learn to identify your emotions, understand them and deal with them correctly.
It is important to bear the following in mind when it comes to emotions:
• You are the only person who can deal with your emotions.
• There are times that you cannot remain in control.
• You need to be able to identify the emotion and know what caused it.
• You need to control your feelings, but do not suppress or ignore them
• How you deal with your feelings is your choice
• You choose how you behave
• You can deal with peer pressure by saying “no”.
• You can be in control by stopping, thinking and then doing.
• Do not exaggerate. Remain reasonable and calm.
• If you are in a negative situation, remove yourself from the situation and do something that calms you down
• Do not agonise over negative situations. It will only make you more negative.
The following technique is called the Traffic Light Technique: (Taken from: Emosionele Intelligensie vir kinders en tieners by Dr Rina de Klerk and Dr Ronel le Roux)
This technique will help you apply emotional control. 1. STOP: RED
THINK: ORANGE
SAMPLE
1. The red light tells you to stop, breathe deeply and calm down.
DO: GREEN
2. The orange light tells you to take time to think the situation over and look for alternative ways to act.
3. The green light gives you permission to act in the most appropriate way. Now act correctly.
Red
Orange Green