The Superhero in Me

Develop self-awareness by exploring your capabilities and challenges

Gaining self-awareness is crucial for students to make informed decisions about their life. With knowledge about their abilities and limitations, they can identify opportunities and set goals that align with their talents and passions, leading to a greater sense of fulfillment and success.

Moreover, understanding weaknesses can help students to identify areas that need improvement and develop strategies to overcome them. Recognising challenges can help them to develop problem-solving skills and the ability to adapt to change. Self-awareness also enables students to better understand and regulate their emotions and develop healthy relationships with others, contributing to their overall well-being.

The tool involves drawing a superhero, sidekick and nemesis, which allows students to explore their strengths, weaknesses, and challenges in a creative and engaging way.

Learning outcome

The student is able to gain self-awareness by identifying their own strengths, weaknesses and challenges

Students define their strengths, weaknesses and challenges and translate them into superhero, sidekick and nemesis characters that embody those aspects of themselves. This can guide the students’ self-awareness throughout the rest of a course or degree programme.

1.Strengths, Weaknesses and Challenges

20 mins

Divide the students into groups of 3 or 4 and ask them to define their strengths, weaknesses and challenges. Instruct them to work together and gain a clear understanding of their individual strengths, weaknesses and challenges.

Tip: provide guiding questions to help define personal strengths, weaknesses and challenges.

2.Creating the Characters

30 mins

Once the students have defined their strengths, weaknesses and challenges, instruct them to transfer these qualities into their own characters by drawing a superhero (representing their strengths), sidekick (compensating their weaknesses) and nemesis (an opponent or rival, posing their challenges).

After drawing the characters on the Superhero Canvas, the students can name the character they have created.

Tip: as a warm-up exercise, you can also use a deck of cards with unusual heads, bodies arms and legs, and have the students combine them to form a character. Inspiration for a deck of cards can be found under Key Advice.

3.Showing the Characters

50 mins

After the students have finished drawing their characters, instruct them to share their work with their peers. Have them explain the qualities of their characters to a neighbour for a 3-minute presentation.

Then, give each student 15 minutes to receive feedback from their peers.

Tip: encourage constructive criticism and provide guidelines for giving and receiving feedback.

4.Adjusting the Characters

10 mins

After receiving feedback from their peers, ask the students to reflect on their characters and identify any adjustments they want to make based on their new self-awareness.

Encourage the students to take into account the feedback they received from their peers during the reflection process. Instruct them to make any necessary adjustments to their characters.

Please note, as part of assessment as learning, students reflect using reflective questions.

5.Unleashing the Characters

10 mins

Ask the students to reflect on their experiences throughout the course by using the three characters they created in Step 2, by answering the reflective questions for each character on a weekly basis.

Please note, as part of assessment as learning, students reflect using reflective questions.

Assessment as learning is applied by the students’ reflection on their experiences through the lens of their characters in Steps 4 and 5. Encourage the students to be honest and reflective to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and how they can continue to grow and develop in the future.

Purpose

Assessment as learning aims to strengthen the learning process and the development of metacognitive skills. It empowers students to direct their own learning and to become independent, critical self-assessors.

Roles

Self-assessment

Characteristics

Self-regulated learning

Materials

Reflective questions

Download Reflective questions (Step 4)

Download Weekly reflective questions (Step 5)

Guiding questions that can help define personal strengths, weaknesses and challenges (Step 1) can be downloaded below.

For inspiration for the deck of cards (Step 2), see avatarmaker.com and/or southparkstudios.com/info/lv0nha/avatar.

The Superhero Canvas (Step 2) and Guidelines for giving and receiving feedback (Step 3) can be downloaded below.

Download Guiding Questions

Download Superhero Canvas

Download Guidelines Feedback