Goal Setting

Goal Setting- January- 2016 - Ms. Miller- Room 27- Harry C, Sharp Elementary

We have been very busy and overwhelmed this past month. However, I finally got the opportunity to introduce Lauren D'Amore to my 5th grade class via video. My students were very excited. We watched some lacrosse highlights on youtube and discussed the sport a little bit. We also researched the University of Pennsylvania and talked about what Lauren can do with a business degree. I also had the students brainstorm about what it is like to be an athlete and attend college.

Next, we moved on to our goal setting lesson and talked about what a goal was. We reviewed what we heard in Lauren's video and had students summarize what she said. We discussed the importance of creating goals and sharing them with others.

Then we moved on to our own goals. I talked about my long term goals and short term goals for my class. Next, students worked to come up with their own long term goals and three short term goals that could help them reach their long term goal. We had everything from earning a homework pass for the third marking period, to learning the basics of cooking. Students shared their goals with their group members who provided feedback.

Students then created posters highlighting their goals, long and short term with a deadline. I decided to turn this into a bulletin board in our classroom so the students wouldn't lose sight of their goals. This was a great lesson and I believe my students took away the importance of setting goals.

Mentor: Lainey Dorris - Cramer CPLS - Room 108’s Goal Setting Journey

Although our class got off to a late start, we were able to enjoy a couple of goal setting lessons. We started with a definition of the word goal and discussed the types of goals. Lainey’s video was really helpful as she provided examples of long-term versus short-term goals. We also covered the fact that we need to be able to measure our achievement and our class will revisit this element of goal setting frequently. We also will continue to clarify the goals set during the course of this lesson.
 
Prior to the start of the lesson, students were asked to think about something they really wanted to do or have. This process enabled them to use personal experience as a gateway to our discussion on goal setting (LA.1.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.8). The desired outcome for this lesson was for each student to set a goal that benefited his or her academic and/or social development.
 
For this lesson we revisited a previously read text, Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jordan, the mother of professional ball player, Michael Jordan. Students were able to verbalize Michael’s goal of winning at basketball, but also recognized the fact that he worked hard to achieve his goal.  After we reread portions of the text, students were able to ask and answer questions about the text that helped them to clarify the meaning of the word goal as well as the steps needed to achieve a goal (LA.1.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.1). This activity along with Lainey’s video provided a basis for the students to verbally communicate their goals and prepared them for the next segment of the lesson.
 
At this point in the lesson the students had to create a goal and write down a couple of the steps needed to achieve the goal. This is where the students initially struggled, but they ultimately recognized the steps needed to realize their goal.  Again, Lainey’s video helped them to understand studying as a step to achieve their academic goals. Although Lainey discussed goals as individual I did give the students one condition prior to writing their goal. The goal had to relate to their progress at school.
 
Later in the week the students had to come up with 2 to 3 words to identify their goal.  The students then wrote these words in the middle of a sheet of construction paper and drew pictures related to their chosen goal.  
 
Lastly each child held up the pictures with their goals in the center and I took a short video as they stated their goals (some of which were modified due to nervousness once I started the video).

University of Pennsylvania meets Davis Family School First Graders!

Wow! What an exciting first few lessons to begin our journey with College Champions. We started late - with the return from holiday break, benchmark testing, the snowstorm, and just the everyday craziness of a first grade classroom, we were down to the wire with finishing our lessons and getting these posts up for all to see! 

My co-teacher Ms. Obeck and I wanted to find an age appropriate, interesting, and captivating way to introduce the concept of goal setting to our students before they watched the video from Sonya. While we did not find a video about that, we found a great song about goal setting, doing your best, and being what you want to be that has now be come our theme song for this journey we are beginning! (Find our song here if you'd like to hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG3HxrW1qZk) As you will see in the pictures we post, the students in our class love this song and are beginning to learn the words and sing along with it! 

After the excitement of discovering a great theme song for our journey, we moved on to the next grand event - meeting Sonya (through her welcome video) and then hearing her first lesson about goal setting. The students were excited to learn about her and from her and just as excited to learn about UPenn, which we found a virtual tour of and shared it with the students. 

Sonya challenged our students to come up with a short term goal and a long term goal and three ways to achieve each of them. They all did come up with both, and then drew a picture and wrote about their goals and then we recorded the students reading what they wrote. We had class discussions about why we set goals and why we tell them to others and why they change so much. 

We got off to a hectic start....but now that we are started and running at full speed, we can't wait to move on to perseverance and hear what Sonya has to teach us next! 

Mrs. Adriano - Goal Setting Summary

      My class began this journey by playing a true/false game to learn facts about our mentor.  The students were so excited to guess what our mentor will be like.  After the game, I introduced Matt to the students.  I have never seen them so excited.  They were amazed seeing Matt in newspaper articles.  The next week every day a student would ask about Matt.  I loved seeing my group already intrigued with the program.

      I introduced what long/short terms goals mean.  I showed a few books to the students about goal setting, such as Salt in His Shoes and Inches and Miles. I wanted the students to see these books so they can see examples of how kids just like them make goals and work to achieve it.  From there, we watched Matt's video.  I thought the students were excited to see Matt in the locker room. However, seeing Matt in a setting they could relate to really got their attention.  I think it made Matt seem more real to them.

      The next goal setting activity we did was create 4 short term goals and 1 long term goal on a hand print.  The students really but thought into these goals.  I encouraged them to have at least 1 goal they can begin to work on that same day in the classroom.   It was amazing to see things they wanted to improve upon.  From there, we worked on what we needed to do to accomplish these goals.  I assigned each student a buddy.  This buddy is going to help and encourage the student work toward their goal!

      I am very excited to continue on this journey with my students.  We received our t-shirts today.  The students are eager to take a picture to show Matt their shirts tomorrow!

Mentor: Lainey Dorris - Cramer - Room 212’s Journey to Achieving Goals

In the beginning of the year, I actually started talking about goals for my September bulletin board called Let’s Start of the School Year “Write” being on Point.” The students had to write how they would stay on point in the school year. One example was “In Second Grade, I will stay on point by listening to my teacher and showing respect to others.” Our mentor is Lainey Dorris and the students were engaged watching her video! Her video was insightful for my students to understand the meaning of setting a goal. Also goal was one of our spelling words so we discussed the meaning of the word and the students learned the difference between a short and long-term goal. Majority of my students’ goals were receiving a 100% on their assessments because we keep track of their performance through a progress tracker system where the students record their tests, grade, and reflect their feelings on the assessment. Some students goals weren’t academic based and I remind those students that we are working on achieving those goals such as improving handwriting or sitting the correct in a chair or carpet.

 
To start my goal setting lesson, we read the story “Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss, the character goes on an adventure to these different places and he discovers that he will decide where he will go and he will be successful with a positive attitude. My students discussed how they can be a winner in school and what kind of places do they want to go to achieve their dreams. This book is a great tool to motivate students to think about where they want to go in the future. For the activity of setting a goal, my students used an index card to write down their short term goal for school and my students shared their goal to their classmates. Lainey’s video helped my students to identify what type of goal that they should want to achieve in school. Now I wanted to have my students focus on a goal where they felt needed improvement such as staying in the homework club. It is a personal goal that they weren’t forced to choose with requirements and hopefully it will have a positive effect in their performance. Lastly, each student shared their goal to their classmates and we snapped fingers after each goal to show supports of their goals. 

Summary - Ms. Juhring

We have had so much fun introducing Brooks Martino to the class.  We told them a couple of weeks ago when we found out that we have been accepted into the College Champions program that we would have the opportunity to meet a college athlete and work with them over the next few months.  This was the last time we mentioned the program to them, until today!  

We went about our morning as normal.  When we finished our Guided reading Groups, we told the kids that we were going to play a game of Hang Man.  Which they were excited about because we have never played a game of Hang Man prior to this.  They were all trying to guess what the words were going to be, many of them assumed that we would use the spelling words for this week.  How wrong they were!  It was exciting to see them getting excited about guessing letters and realizing that were clearly weren't using this week’s spelling words.  Once they guess all of the letters and saw Brooks' name on the SmartBoard, they were confused at first, but then one of the scholars mentioned "Oh, is this the college thing," and that sparked some memories of what we told them weeks ago.

As you can see in the pictures below, Brooks is a sentence strip stick figure.  He lives on the chalkboard ledge and will have inspiring words for the scholars from time to time!  The kids found it hysterical that we had a stick figure in our room and they couldn't wait to take pictures with him!  There was some stiff competition for who would get to hold Brooks during the picture, the winner was chosen by drawing sticks.  The lucky winner was beyond excited!

This month's goal aligned perfectly to what we have been working on throughout this school year with our kids.  We talk all the time about setting meaningful goals for themselves, both academically and life goals. (LA.1.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.8) We just got new whiteboards (Yay!) and this was the first time we used them.  Each scholar wrote their personal goal on the write board and we shared them and took a photo!

Summary - Ms. Crowe

Room 707 has a new love for Wednesdays!  Over the past three weeks, I have dedicated a 45 period to the College Champions program and I plan on adding at least one more 45 minute block in the next month.  I started our first lesson by explaining the program and sharing my experience with Classroom Champions.  Though my experience was not first hand, I was able to see all of the benefits this program provides for children of all ages.    The kids instantly became curious about the athletes involved in the program and had many questions about College Champions.  Students talked in groups about where they see themselves in 20 years.

During our 2nd lesson, students watched Matt's "Welcome to Our Journey" video.  They were really excited to see the locker room and meet our athlete.  After the video, the students were asked to develop 1-2 questions for Matt in groups of 4.  Many of the students came up with similar questions so we chose 3-4 questions from the entire class.  The students were somewhat shy to ask the questions on video but my hope is that they become more comfortable as we get more involved in the program.  After many attempts at making a somewhat decent video, we were able to create a video that was, for lack of a better word, acceptable.

During our 3rd lesson, I introduced the definition of a goal.  I modeled writing goals since I have many of my own.  I shared an excerpt about goal setting from a book I'm currently reading, "The Happiness Project".  To be completely honest, I didn't think the students would have an easy time developing goals but they definitely surprised me (as they always do).  I modeled writing a long term and short term goal about my Yoga Teacher Training program.  We talked about writing measurable goals since some of the students would simply say "Practice" as a short term goal instead of "Practice 3-4 times a week for 45 minutes".  The students wrote one long term and three short term goals on a post it.  We posted each of our goals on a class poster in the room.

Today, three of my students asked, "Ms. Crowe, are we doing College Champions today?"  To hear that made me so happy!  I look forward to upcoming lessons and opportunities for student growth.

Standards:
CC. 1.7.4.A: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions on grade level topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
CC.1.7.4.B:  Paraphrase portions of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
CC.1.7.4.C: Identify the reasons and evidence a speaker provides to support particular points
CC.1.7.4.D: Report on a topic, or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly with adequate volume, appropriate pacing, and clear pronunciation.