A mum this morning explained how she was maintaining a star chart for all her child’s eleven plus successes. The mum said that the horizons and scope of the chart were wide and all embracing. Did she mean that this meant tidying the bed room earned a star as well as success on an eleven plus exercise? I will need to leave you make up your own mind.
I reminded her of the basket-ball coach in America who used a form of a star chart with his high school basketball team. The majority of the team were poor shooters. The coach decided to give all his boys one hundred free shots every day. The coach found after a few weeks that the boys did not improve very much at all.
He then made a huge chart with every member’s name and the number of daily successful throws. He angled the results at improvement rather than correct throws. Almost every one made steady progress!
This is a bit like expecting an eleven plus child to benefit from doing paper after paper. The progress may not reflect the effort! Practice alone did not help the sports people to improve. Progress was made when each player noted and recorded his progress rather than how many correct shots he achieved.
Is there a moral here?
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