Introduction
A personal development plan is an essential tool for the development of a student, the development plan helps a student plan on the basic strategies to use to evaluate and enhance his capabilities. Evaluation of personal capability entails reviewing personal traits like the strengths and weaknesses in various areas of learning. The students should make sure that these areas are well understood after which the individual should provide an action plan complete with a deadline and an effectiveness measure. The deadline assist the student to achieve their goals by a given date at which the student will evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy employed. If the strategies employed are not effective, the students need to formulate other strategies that favor his development. The personal development plan is reviewed at several stages of the individual development. The individual may enlist the help from friends to gauge his performance levels or perform some tests to check on his development.
Initial personal development plan
The initial personal development plan was aimed at resolving some of the problems encountered in the previous academic levels. In the previous levels personal development was not planed thus some of the areas suffered causing a decrease in the knowledge levels. Over the years personal development was random and skills acquired were easily forgotten due to lack of adequate practice and use of these knowledge in the practical world. The personal development plan was designed to tackle the areas where weakness was seen in the learning process and ensure the areas of strength were maintained at high levels. The initial development plan was aimed at improving personal presentation skills, confidence was lacking in the presentation skills thus the presentations were not convincing to the audience, the presentation took longer times than required, this was due to lack of understanding the topic thus the ability to summarize work was compromised. Confidence is also caused by fear of other students, being new to the school may have caused this as most of students were new. To increase the confidence levels, interaction with the students through social groups was encouraged. The presentation skills were allocated a period of one semester which key aspects of presentation were to be practiced.
Reading skills were lacking prior to the personal development plan, connecting the information read was a problem. The need to understand information from various sources arose. If information is understood reading is made easy. The understanding of words was also lacking. Failure to understand the words and familiarizing with them causes this problem. The brain requires an adequate word bank to ensure that the person can read effectively. To resolve this problem reading from various sources is recommended to ensure that the student understand more words. Increasing the amount of words assist the individual to gain confidence in personal skills thus learn is made easy. Listening to discussions and debates plays an important part in increasing the knowledge of an individual; this assists the students to improve on the ideas by building on the ideas already in the learner and getting ideas from other sources. The student may follow up the discussions or the debates by personal learning thus improve on the reading skills. Reading skills are acquired over a period of time so they were allocated a series of development levels marked by the grade. The levels in the previous academic level improved with the increase in learning materials.
In the reading process, Time management is crucial for the student. Planning is needed by the student to ensure that the all aspects of learning are integrated and well managed to fit the student’s time frame. The student should allocate all daily activities adequate time to ensure that they are catered for. The important activities like reading and group work discussions should be allocated more time. The areas of weakness in the student should be allocated more time and resources to ensure that they improve. Time allocation in the previous levels was improving with the student finding adequate time to perform other tasks. Time management ensures that all the time available to the student is well managed and utilized. Time management helps address those areas of weakness. Time management was given a time frame of two months where by time tables were drawn for the activities performed and strict deadlines were expected to be met. Time management was improving as less time was wasted in the previous levels. Its projected that with the progress made the levels of time wasted will reduce enabling the student to utilize this resource efficiently.
Group skill are important to the students learning skills, group work brings students with different abilities and different understanding together. These group traits allow the members of the group to develop each other with the weaker students benefiting from the able students. The communication skills are enhanced in these groups as those students that do not understand in class have the chance to consult their fellow classmates. The type of students determines the merits of the group, students contributing more to the group are better learners than those that receive the knowledge. In the previous levels this was noted and efforts to contribute more to the group were initiated. More contribution has resulted to more understanding of topics and the overall class performance has increased. The group skills were allocated two months to ensure their improvement.
Social skills are needed in the learning process, to socialize with the right people in the school and after school play an important pant in enhancing confidence of the individual. Students with more friends due to their social skills tend to be more confident that those with few friends. Social skills assist the learner to gain the confidence which plays an important in understanding and associating with other students. Social skills were lacking before the personal development plan but after its initiation more friends have been acquired. The kind of friends acquired also determines the character of the student. Friends that are useful to the student will facilitate academic growth.
Last semester’s academic growth
Presentation skills have improved greatly due to the measures put in place to ensure that presentation skills are increased. The increase in the knowledge on topics presented assisted in the presentation process. Compared to the previous semesters, presentation confidence has greatly improved and this is evident from the grading of the presentation. There is a need for improvement and through constant growth presentation skills will be enhanced. Reading skills have improved due to quantity reading familiarizing with new words from different sources. The different use of the words has ensured that the student understands the words better and understand their application. The reading skills have increased due to these factors and with more effort this skills will be enhanced.
Group skills have increased though need to improve is also encouraged. Ability to contribute to topics under discussion is facilitated by the increase in knowledge. Mastering the topics and explaining the concepts to the other group members has enabled the student to increase his knowledge and communication skills. The student has also been able to socialize with the right people thus enabling him to grow in social skills. Growth in social skills has enabled the student to acquire more friends thus confidence levels have increased. The number of friends has increased over time and this can be measured from the social networks in the school and popularity in the school.
Time management has enabled the student to reduce the time wasted thus the day is spent doing activities that increase personal development. Time is an important resource to the student thus allocation of time to useful activities enables the student to grow and dedicate time to more important matters. Idle time is apportioned to reading rather than activity that would affect the growth of the student.
Future personal development plan
In the next four semesters, the plan will be to improve on the current development plan focusing more on the areas of weakness. Presentation skills have improved greatly thus time dedication and more practice will be needed to maintain this levels. Three weeks of every semester will be dedicated to sharpening presentation skills. Reading skills require adequate material and time resource. Reading from books and two weeks of each semester will be dedicated to reading. The student will also read articles to be up to date with the current affairs. Group work has improved greatly but concerns over time wasting require the student to cut back on the hours spent discussing with other students. The time requirement is three days a week from the initial six days a week. Time management is being done in an appropriate manner and the student is finding better use of the free time he has. Time management in the semesters to come should be maintained at the same levels to enable the student to maintain current development rates. Socialization skills are needed to boast student’s confidence; the student’s confidence levels are relatively high so the less time should be spent on socializing. The time requirement for socializing should be limited to breaks and discussing groups to minimize the time loss.