Our+Strengths

Students are going to spend some time learning about their strengths during the next three weeks. Part of this will involve taking a questionnaire called a Strengths Explorer. We'll be posting more information about this questionnaire and the follow up activities on this page.

The Strengths Explorer has a parent guide with it. We'll be sending home the first page of the guide in a hard copy, but here you'll find the entire guide. The focus of this activity is to draw students' attention to what they do well and what strengths they have to contribute to the class. Sometimes academic life can seem to focus primarily on what students need to improve. We want to emphasize this year that each student has a unique set of skills and strengths that need to be appreciated and understood. We'll refer to these strengths a number of times throughout the year; asking students to reflect on how their talents have already helped them as learners and how they can leverage their strengths to help them grow in new ways.

The first activity we'll do with the questionnaire is ask students to analyze the results. Are these the same talents they've had in the past? Do they agree with the top three strengths? Are they surprised? What do they have questions about? It is important to note that there are no negatives in the questionnaire. It's a positive spotlight!

Ask your child to tell you about their strengths!