This is a tool that helps an educator and the children in her group learn how confident children are feeling about a given task.
The Confidence Clock can be used alongside asking children…
- to share a health message with classmates or at home; or
- to conduct or demonstrate activity at home or with other children.
Making the clock
- Lay something circular like a small bowl or large tin onto a piece of paper.
- Draw around the diameter of the object
- Cut out the circle
- Folding circle of paper three times
- Number each section
- Make a small paper arrow
- Attach the blunt end of the arrow to the middle of the circle using a paper fastener.
Using the clock
Ask each child to turn the arrow to a number that represents the level of his/her feeling of confidence. In this example ‘8’ is the highest and ‘1’ the lowest.
Some children might find it challenging at first to share or demonstrate messages or ideas at home or with friends or classmates. Make sure as their educator, the children do not feel ‘forced’ but develop their skills and confidence in themselves at their own pace.
If children express that they do not feel confident the educator needs to listen to this and provide extra support or delay that child needing to take action until they feel more confident.
This tool can also be used by a small group who can decide on their feeling of collective confidence’. The larger the group the more time will be needed for the group to come to a consensus. The discussion around the ‘score’ can be interesting and revealing.
If using the Confidence Clock as a formal monitoring tool in your programme then make a note of the scores each time you do an activity and watch to see how the children’s confidence is developing. This way you are creating evidence about something hard to measure like ‘confidence’. Confidence is extremely important for children who are becoming health activists.
Using the Confidence Clock in Training…
We sometimes use the Confidence Clock in training to find out quickly how confident the participants feel to train others or work with children on participatory programmes or activities.
Please share!
Please share this post with anyone you know that is interested in health education, participatory methods and innovative methods. Get in touch on clare@childrenforhealth.org if you want more detail on how we conduct each of the seven sessions.