Learning target 3.2
Self-Care & Resilience
Notice early warning signs, apply self-care responses, maintain them under pressure, and build a personal resilience framework over time.
T3Practised disposition
Orientations students grow into — practised over time, observed across contexts. Assessed by what they consistently do, not what they say.
Criteria — what growth looks like
Every learning target has a set of criteria specifying what growth looks like at each band. For this practised-disposition LT, each criterion lists what would be observed (and what would be confused with it) rather than rubric levels.
6 criteria across 6 bands.
Band A— Water + Air Dragons
K–2ages 5–7
A.1The student names a specific trusted adult they could go to for help and carries out a simple self-care routine with supportive reminders, across most occasions when it is needed.
Observation indicators
- The student names a specific trusted adult (parent, class teacher, school counsellor) they could go to for help, unprompted.
- The student carries out a simple self-care routine (handwashing, toothbrushing, water, rest) with supportive reminders, on most occasions it is needed.
- The student asks for help from a trusted adult in small everyday matters, not only in big or visible distress moments.
Confusable behaviours
- Help-seeking only at crisis (waiting for visible distress before asking) mistaken for healthy help-seeking. Distinction: the disposition is help-seeking as an ordinary skill, not an emergency reach.
- Tattling (seeking adult intervention against a peer) mistaken for trusted-adult relationship. Distinction: help-seeking here is for the student's own wellbeing, not adjudication of peer disputes.
Absence indicators
- The student waits for visible physical distress (fever, tears, injury) before asking for help, indicating help-seeking is not yet a normal skill.
- The student does not have a consistent specific trusted adult named outside their immediate family, over weeks of classroom life.
Conversation prompts
- Who is a grown-up at school you can ask for help when you need it? Tell me about a time you did.
- Tell me about what happens when you feel not-quite-right — what do you do?
- Tell me about a time you asked for help and it made something better.
Band B— Earth Dragons
G3–4ages 8–10
B.1The student names a bodily early-warning sign in themselves and selects a practised self-care response before activation escalates, across multiple occasions.
Observation indicators
- The student names a bodily early-warning sign in themselves (tiredness, irritability, headache, tight chest) in their own words.
- The student selects a practised self-care response (water, short break, movement, feeling-naming, calm corner) before activation fully escalates, across multiple occasions.
- The student signals to an adult when they have noticed an early sign they do not yet have a response for, rather than waiting for the sign to become unmanageable.
Confusable behaviours
- After-the-fact narration ("I was tired so I got grumpy") mistaken for early self-care. Distinction: the disposition is pre-escalation noticing and response, not retrospective explanation.
- Generic tiredness reporting (saying "I'm tired" as a regular refrain without changed behaviour) mistaken for signal-responsive care. Distinction: the noticing is followed by an action calibrated to what the student noticed.
Absence indicators
- Escalation episodes (tears, snapping at a peer, withdrawal) recur weekly with no observable pre-escalation pause or response.
- The student can name signals in abstract (lessons on the body) but does not apply the vocabulary to their own in-the-moment state.
Conversation prompts
- What are the first signs in your body that tell you something's building up?
- Tell me about a time you caught a feeling early this month — what did you do?
- When do you notice signs early, and when do they sneak up on you?
Band C— Fire Dragons
G5–6ages 10–12
C.1The student articulates a self-care plan with context-specific strategies for home and school, names multiple trusted people or services for support, and acts on the plan across real situations.
Observation indicators
- The student articulates — spontaneously or on brief prompt — a self-care plan with context-specific strategies for both home and school.
- The student names two or more trusted people or services (counsellor, teacher, parent, nurse, external line) they could turn to for support, with specificity about which for which kind of concern.
- The student's plan acknowledges that different contexts (home, school, online) need different strategies, rather than applying one strategy everywhere.
- The student follows through on their plan in real situations, not only in reflective conversation.
Confusable behaviours
- Plan fluency (being able to describe the plan on request) mistaken for enacted self-care. Distinction: observation in real stressful moments should match the plan's claims.
- Listing adults from a poster (reciting the help-seeking chain) mistaken for having a genuine trusted adult. Distinction: the disposition shows in specificity — which adult for which concern, not just "a teacher".
Absence indicators
- The student can name strategies and people but the real-situation response shows no deployment of either, over multiple observed occasions.
- The student's plan flattens home and school into the same thing, indicating they have not yet grasped that contexts differ.
Conversation prompts
- Where do you find self-care easiest — at home or at school — and why?
- When do you find it easiest to ask someone for help, and when does it feel hardest?
- Tell me about a plan you have for when a hard day is starting — does it work?
Band D— Metal + Light Dragons
G7–8ages 12–13
D.1The student sustains key self-care routines through genuinely stressful periods without adult scaffolding, and offers non-directive support to a peer at least occasionally.
Observation indicators
- The student sustains key self-care routines (sleep protection, movement, exit from pressurising group chat, calm corner, food and water) through a genuinely stressful period — assessment window, social friction, demanding project — without adult scaffolding.
- The student's self-care pattern under pressure holds consistently with their self-care pattern in calm periods, rather than collapsing when it is most needed.
- The student offers a peer a specific non-directive form of support (sitting alongside, asking what they need, gentle checking in) on at least one observed occasion.
- The student seeks help when they recognise their own strategies are insufficient, rather than persisting alone past the point they can manage.
Confusable behaviours
- Performed resilience ("I'm fine") under visible strain mistaken for sustained self-care. Distinction: the disposition is observable practice continuing — not the absence of complaint.
- Directive peer help ("you should try X") mistaken for non-directive support. Distinction: non-directive support asks what the peer needs, does not prescribe.
Absence indicators
- Self-care routines collapse first in pressure weeks (sleep drops, exercise stops, food becomes irregular) even though the student has the capability in calm weeks.
- Under pressure, the student takes on peer support in a way that overextends them (the "helper" role as a way to avoid their own self-care).
Conversation prompts
- Which parts of your self-care hold up under pressure, and which fall off first?
- Tell me about a time this term you helped a friend who was struggling — how did you decide what to do?
- What does 'looking after yourself' actually mean for you right now?
Band E— Stone Dragons
G9–10ages 14–16
E.1The student sustains self-care through extended pressure periods without prompting, seeks help when their own strategies are insufficient with appropriate timing, and participates authentically in peer-group self-care norms.
Observation indicators
- The student sustains self-care through extended pressure periods (assessment terms, high-commitment projects, personal-life turbulence) without prompting.
- The student seeks help when their own strategies are insufficient — neither too early (outsourcing effort) nor too late (after burnout is evident).
- The student participates in peer-group self-care norms (group sleep protection, group exit from escalating chat, group check-ins) in a way that registers as authentic rather than performative, across more than one context.
- The student's self-care extends to what they refuse, not only what they do (saying no to over-commitment, declining to pile on to a pressured peer).
Confusable behaviours
- Performative wellness participation (joining the meditation group visibly; posting self-care content) mistaken for sustained self-care. Distinction: the disposition shows in what happens when no-one is watching.
- Early help-seeking as pattern (asking adults to intervene before attempting own strategies) mistaken for calibrated help-seeking. Distinction: the disposition shows in timing — waiting long enough to have tried, not long enough to have collapsed.
Absence indicators
- The student's self-care collapses first in pressure periods and the collapse is recurrent across terms, without meaningful adjustment.
- The student reports wellness practices convincingly but peer and parent observations show them dropping under any strain.
Conversation prompts
- Where are your self-care limits — the places where pressing on stops helping?
- Tell me about a time this year when asking for help was the right call, and one when waiting longer was.
- Which of your self-care practices feel like yours, and which still feel like school-y rituals?
Band F— Sky Dragons
G11–12ages 16–18
F.1The student articulates a personal resilience framework — non-negotiables, early-warning signals, recovery protocols — developed across years, recognisably authored rather than borrowed, and continuing to develop.
Observation indicators
- The student articulates — in Reflection 360 or spontaneous reflection — their personal resilience framework: non-negotiable self-care commitments, early-warning signals, recovery protocols.
- The student describes how the framework has developed across their school years, with specific references to what changed and why.
- The student's framework is recognisably theirs (particular to their life, not a generic version of the programme's language).
- The student continues to adjust the framework as circumstances change, rather than holding it as complete.
Confusable behaviours
- Articulate use of the programme's resilience vocabulary, without the specificity of the student's own framework, mistaken for authored resilience. Distinction: the disposition shows in particulars — this student's non-negotiables, this student's warning signs.
- Framework-as-performance (presenting a clean resilience story for Reflection 360) mistaken for lived framework. Distinction: the framework should correspond to behaviour in the rest of the week.
Absence indicators
- The student's resilience language borrows entirely from programme materials with no personal specificity visible, even after sustained Reflection 360 work.
- The student's framework and the observed week-to-week self-care practice diverge, with the framework being more coherent than the practice.
Conversation prompts
- Walk me through your resilience system — the parts that are settled, the parts still in progress.
- What in your framework is unmistakably yours, and what is still the programme's voice?
- What's the version of this you expect to need in the first year after school — what will change?