Scott Yates, English Instructor
syates@shastacollege.edu
Success Mapping: Students Do Strategic Planning
Rationale: Students come to our courses with a variety of past successes and skills that can be built on.
However, sometimes students do not apply their successes and skills to the challenges of a new course. They
may get discouraged with the challenges, lose confidence, and eventually lose motivation and fail the course.
This strategy works to build student confidence on the foundation of past successes and skills. Students plan,
monitor, engage in, invest in, and take responsibility for their own success in current and future courses, and
this builds student motivation, retention, and success (See Alvarez and Risko, 2009, p. 21)1.
Materials: Blank success maps, course syllabi, a docu-cam or an overhead projector.
Procedures:
1. In the first class meeting, ask the students to think back through their lives and pick two times they
succeeded in something (anything, not necessarily academically related). After a pause of a minute or
two, the teacher should model this, mentioning one time s/he succeeded in the past. Then, ask the
students to say what skills the teacher used to succeed. These could be written on the board.
2. Have students get into groups of three or four and each tell one of their past successes to their group.
Group members point out what skills each student used to succeed.
3. Have students get out of their groups and write paragraphs on their two successes and the skills they
used to succeed in each case. Save these paragraphs for later.
4. Pass out the course syllabus. Ask students to look it over silently for the next five minutes. After five
minutes, elicit answers to the questions: What were the important parts of this syllabus? How did you
locate those parts?
5. Now, have students read the syllabus again, but this time, instruct students to look for things they see
as challenging requirements in the course. The teacher should model this task quickly and write down
one requirement in a “Challenges” box on a projected copy of a blank Success Map.
6. Pass out copies of the Success Map. Students should write one requirement in each of the three
“Challenges” boxes of their Success Map.
7. Then, have students consult their paragraphs on their successes. Using the information in these
paragraphs, students should fill out the “Successes” box and the “Skills” arrows on the Success Map.
The students need not fill every arrow. Model if needed.
8. Point out that students can see, on their Maps, some skills they have that they can use to meet the
challenges of the class. Then, have students write plans in the “Plans” boxes to show how they will
apply their skills to fulfill the challenges of the course. Demonstrate on the projected copy of the
Success Map.
9. The instructor may collect the Maps to comment on them or leave them with students.
Follow-up: A few weeks into the semester, I have students fill out a questionnaire asking them to selfevaluate their performance in the class, the effectiveness of their plan, how well they are following the
plan, and whether or not they need any further help from me for them to succeed in the course.
1
Alvarez, M. C. & Risko, V. J. (2009). Motivation and Study Strategies. In Rona F. Flippo & David C. Caverly (Eds.),
Handbook of College Reading and Study Strategy Research (2nd ed.) (pp. 199-219). New York: Routledge.
Successes
Skills
Plans
Challenges