Cue cards to promote discussion

I'm just about to deliver a course entitled "Confidence Counts" - I want my learners to reflect on their current skills levels and to discuss their needs.  I have created a set of cue cards as a self-assessment tool to aid the process of learners becoming more confident; to help them identify their learning goals; to share and compare expereinces and the activity can be repeated at the end of the course as a form of self-assessment to measure progress. 

I adapted the statements on the cue cards from  the NIACE document "Catching Confidence in Maths" - a freely available resource to download.

The statements are:
I am confident about an everyday activity like writing a shopping list or...
I do not feel confident about writing something like an official letter or...
I am confident about doing this course because...
I do not feel confident about doing this course because...
Being willing to risk making mistakes is a sign of confidence because...
Making mistakes makes me feel...
I can get by without English skills because...
I can't get by without English skills because...
I can learn anything I need to learn if I stick with it because...
The one thing I dread being asked to do on this course is...
By taking this course, I'm really looking forward to being able to...

Statements cues can be adapted according to the learning cohort which makes it flexible. I shall do the activity as a form of snowball exercise by giving learners an opportunity to think about the way that they would finish their cue card (picked at random), then pair them up to discuss their answers with one another and then to feedback to the whole group and  broaden the discussion.

Learners will have the opportunity to summarise their discussion and viewpoint on a summative document to be included in their ilp so that they can revisit their responses at the end of the course.

There are lots of versions of this kind of activity.  I usually do one adapted from a businessballs.com  icebreaker entitled "colour jacouzzi" where learners pick different colour balls out of a bag and answer the question that relates to the colour of the ball they have selected.  This activity is a bit more formal than that as it ensures that all the statements will be addressed.  I use this kind of activity as part of the initial assessment and, adapted, as part of formative assessment about skills.