Goal Setting at Ridge Road Primary

This was a very hard topic for my students.  They tend to think in the immediate or far into the future. (Real and make believe made it even harder since TV shows and movies look so realistic now.  One of my students even asked if our mentor was a real person.)  So we started very simply.  After watching Nate Hinze's goal setting video several times and looking up words in the dictionary, we discussed what the word achievable meant.  My students decided it was something they would be able to do; they just couldn't do it yet.  To ensure they truly understood the concept, I made little cards with different sentences on them.  Each student had to read their card(s) and decide whether the action was achievable or impossible. (The impossible were things such as jumping over the school building.)  They loved this activity!  

                                                                                                                                                                 

                                   

The discussion then turned to the concept of short and long periods of time.  We used the holidays, birthdays, the party next month, and things they couldn't do until they were older (like drive a car and play high school football).  It took some time but my students eventually grasped the idea.  We then took the achievable cards and passed them out again.  Each student read their card but this time instead of two categories, they had three: by Halloween, by the end school, and in a few years.  The task of deciding between by Halloween and by the end of school was a little difficult for some.  The rest of the class aided them, though.  The whole group worked to figure out where quite a few went.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Once my first graders had a clear understanding of what they needed to do, they set to work thinking up and writing their goals.  We wrote the short term goals one week and the long term goals the next week.  (Their goals will be hanging in the hallway.  I have to wait until next week to put them out though. I'll post pictures once they are on the wall.)

                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

When everyone had finished writing both goals, the students asked if we could make another video.  They wanted our mentor, Nate Hinze, to hear their goals.  We spent the next few days making the video and having a ball doing it.  

Here is the link to our video: Goal Setting at Ridge Road Primary         

Our class had a great time setting our goals, and we're looking forward to our next challenge!      

+Nate Hinze +Anjoli Santiago                     

A Dream Written Down... in Mrs. Phillips Class

This year I am lucky to have a Grade 3 and 4 class that is made up of students that I have taught before. Some of them were in my Grade 2 class two years ago, and some were in my Grade 2 class last year. On the very first day, they were already asking if we were going to be "doing" Classroom Champions this year. In fact, it was their second question, right after, "When is lunch?" They were absolutely thrilled that we are jumping right back in! 

Our Mentor Mystery was made up of a series of questions that would lead us to discover our athlete mentor for this year. By a process of elimination, they discovered that our amazing Classroom Champions mentor this year is Akeem Haynes. Funny, awesome, fast, cool... that's what they think about him!

Goal setting is one of my favourite topics because it is so important for success in school, but also in life! We started our work on goal setting by discussing this quote: 

                                        A dream written down becomes a

                                                                Goal

                                              A goal broken down into 

                                                                Steps

                                                            becomes a 

                                                                 Plan

                                                      A plan backed by 

                                                               Action

                                               makes your dreams come true. 

Some of our thoughts about this quote included the importance of writing down your goals so you don't forget them, telling other people about your goals so they can help you, and working really hard to reach your goals. 

Akeem challenged us to write down three goals this month. Ideas came quickly for most, and with a little fine tuning to make them into SMART goals, we all had our list of three goals. I insisted that at least one of the goals be related to school. After this was completed, each student chose one goal to focus on for the first part of the year. We agreed that Winter Break was an easy end date to remember, so most of the students are trying to reach their goal by this time. We thought about what action we would have to take to attain our goals. Everyone agreed that writing down our goal was only the first step, and that they would need to write down some key things that they could do to achieve their goal. This took some more individualized attention as there is a great variety in their goals. It was challenging for them to think of specific steps that they would take on this path to success. In the end, we have some strong goals, and some extremely dedicated students! Dreams will be coming true in our classroom in the next couple of months! 

Goal Setting in Third Grade

We have had a very exciting start to our year in third grade with Classroom Champions!  From the moment the kids saw the Olympic rings on our bulletin board, they were eager to figure out our mentor.  We played an ongoing round of "guess who" during the first week of school, finally revealing that our mentor is Alex Rigsby.  Here is my class posing for Alex:

In the second week of school, we leaped into goal setting.  This is part of the third grade curriculum at my school, Bren Mar Park, so I have taught it before.  Having the awesome platform of Classroom Champions to teach it through made it even better!  We started out by watching Alex's video about goal setting.  The kids were energized after hearing about Alex's goal, and wanted to start on their own right away to meet her challenge of setting one long-term goal and three short-term goals.  To get us in the right mindset for setting goals, we brainstormed our strengths and challenges, then talked about them with a partner.  In the next lesson, we picked one of our challenges to turn into a goal.  The kids filled out a smart goal think sheet about their potential goal to help them fully think it through.  

We learned all about SMART goals in order to complete this sheet.  We used the following acronym:

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Realistic
T - Timely

After filling out the think sheets, students met in pairs and then small groups to discuss their goals.  They used their friends' suggestions to make their goals even better.  At this point, we were finally ready to write our goals!  As many of my students speak English as a second language, we used sentence stems to help us officially write our goals.  We didn't fill out the second half of the goal sheet because we were saving our action plans for later.

 

Then, we got to the fun part.  We made a hockey goal (#TeamAlex) and wrote our goals on hockey pucks.  Now, every time we walk past the goal in the hallway, we imagine that we are scoring goals with the goals that we set.  We can do it!

We had now met the first part of Alex's challenge - every student had set a long-term goal for themselves - but they still needed to set three short-term goals to help them meet that long-term goal.  I explained this to the kids as creating an action plan to meet their goal.  Before we made action plans for ourselves, we practiced making them with partners.  Every pair received an example goal.  They had to work together to think of three steps to take to meet that goal.  Then, we shared all of our action plans as a class.

 

 Finally, we created action plans for our own goals.  Each student thought of three short-term goals that enabled them to meet their long-term goal.  The last step was that students took their goals home to share with their families.  Overall, this was a purposeful, fun-filled month.  We learned a lot about each other and developed the skill of goal-setting, which we will continue to use all year.  We are excited for the rest of the year with Classroom Champions!

Going for the Goal!

This month was a whirlwind of excitement and fun for the Room 21 Rockstars!

We were excited to follow up our Olympic Lunches with Paralympic Lunches and cheer on both Team USA and Team Canada! Especially all of our ridiculously talented and dedicated Classroom Champions mentors.

We welcomed #AlexRigsby as our new mentor and even gave her a tour of our classroom and then dove right in to the challenge!

The kiddos were super stoked to start setting goals for themselves.  It was a challenge at first to convey the message that our goals need to be specific...when we say Dream BIG, these kids do.  A few of them set a few lofty goals and we had a lot of conversations about how to be a bit more specific and realistic.  Once we had that down, we created our long term goal and then our 3 short term goals that will help us get there.

We figured since Alex is a hockey player, why not be punny (We LOVE puns!) and go for the GOAL'd! So I used my epic photog skills and took their pics and they very carefully and with the giggles a'plenty, affixed their heads to a copy of Alex's CC pic! They then wrote their goals on hockey pucks and we placed them on our cabinet.  I am not kidding when I say that these kiddos talk about their goals every single day! I am blown away by their desire and want to meet and SHATTER these goals!

As a culminating activity, I went to the trusty ol' Google Classroom and created a couple of assignments.  They watched Alex's video on their own, took notes (note taking skills yo!), and wrote a small blurb about their knowledge of goal setting and what it means to them!  You can see a few, some didn't meet the deadline, of their thoughts in our class created Google Slideshow!  Ain't technology grand?

Goal Setting Slideshow 

So I am looking forward to seeing just what these kiddos accomplish.  They are really working on living a much more "Growth Mindset" type of life and watching unfold is surely going to be an Olympic moment in my book!  See you next month!

Habits Today = Dream of Tomorrow!

It was a busy month in 9M! New classes, new students, new schedules and a new program - Classroom Champions. Students were excited to de-code our clues and meet our athlete mentor, Scott Tupper!

September is a great time for goal setting. As a class, we started by focusing on our 'Circles of Control'. What are the things in our life that we can control and what things are completely out of our control. This helped students focus on aspects of their life that they have the ability to influence, change and impact.

As a class, we watched a YouTube video detailing a Kobe Bryant elite basketball camp which invited the best college players in the world to attend. One name, who at the time flew under the radar, was Steph Curry. One of the coaches at the camp, who was commentating the video, repeated a question. "Are the habits you have today on par with the dreams you have for tomorrow?" My class, containing quite a few basketball junkies, really got the message. Mr. Moody, also a basketball fan, repeated this endlessly throughout the month!

After planning an academic, behavioural and personal SMART goal, students selected one goal they felt they most wanted to pursue. Using Canva, an online social media and design tool, students created a simplified goal poster. After their design, we printed in color, added a backdrop and laminated the prints to be placed in their locker. Each day, the idea is that students will be reminded of their goal and actively take steps to pursue them!

 

The Funky Monkeys Got Goal-Setting DOWN!

Goal –setting was a great way to start off our year! We began by writing down our hopes and dreams for the school year.  These special “goals” were placed in a time capsule which we will open on the last day of school. Then we read the inspirational book Wilma Unlimited. Students were able to identify not only long term goals Wilma made but short term goals as well. When we finally watched Adam Page’s video we were ready for his challenge!

Students were given the task of creating a goal for home, school and friendship. We discussed how goals needed to be reasonable and measureable. Students were asked, “How would you know you have met your goal?”. A sheet was created for this work using a staircase as a way to connect short term goals and long term goals. My students responded extremely well to this metaphor.  Table teams shared their goals with one another in small discussion groups refining their work and inspiring one another. Each student crafted at least 3 goals if not more! Students were supported during this task with editing and revising their goals. Goals are kept in our work folders so that we could check in and see how we are progressing from time to time.

Perhaps the most significant part of this challenge was the visit from Adam Page and Steve Mesler. Students shared their goals and were given great advice on how to meet them. After our gold medal winning visitors left students wrote in their journals about how the visit will impact their ability to meet their goals. It was a great start to Classroom Champions in my Funky Monkey classroom!

The following CCS Standards were met during goal-setting:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3
Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.1.A
Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.5 (HTTP://WWW.CORESTANDARDS.ORG/ELA-LITERACY/W/2/5/)

With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing.

Goal Setting

Goal setting is a focus at my school. It is important to me that my students are goal oriented. Students had several lessons on goal setting this month and it will continue to be a focus throughout the year.

Lesson 1  

Outcome-Students will identify one personal strength and challenge.

My students this year did not have a lot of background knowledge on setting goals, so I began by spending time explaining to the students what goals were. We looked at several examples and then I began breaking down and explaining SMART goals. Using student friendly language I explained SMART goals as follows:

S-specific. Think details-be exact in in what you want to do

M-measureable-your proof.  How are you going to know when you meet your goal?

A –attainable-it’s possible-It’s something you can do.

R-realistic-take small steps-

T-times-week, month, end of year-What’s your deadline? When do you want to meet your goal?

Next, I had the students brainstorm one strength and one challenge that the students  would turn into a superpower. One of the themes in my classroom is that learning is everyone’s superpower so this lesson built upon that theme as well.  Using a graphic organizer each student listed strength and a challenge. This could also be done as interview between student and teacher.  I collected the papers for the next lesson.

Lesson 2

Outcome: Students will write a goal.

I read the book Pogo Pig out aloud then discussed what Pogo’s goal. If you are unfamiliar with this book, it’s a simple book in which Pogo Pig wants to learn to ride his bike without training wheels and get a big bike. It’s something that the students can easily connect to. After discussing the book, the strength/challenge sheet was returned to the students. They picked either their strength or challenge to turn into their super power (goal). Writing SMART goals are difficult for a lot of third graders and to be honest at this point most students do well just to write a simple goal. I am perfectly fine with that.

I used a SMART Goal form (see picture) to break the process down for the students. Some students easily answered the questions while other students needed support to respond. I collected the SMART goal form for the next lesson.

Lesson 3

The students began this lesson by making a Super Hero. Using their SMART goal sheet, students recorded their goal onto a superpower sheet and attached to their Super Hero (see picture). I displayed these in the hall for Back to School Night. Parents can see that their students are becoming goal orientated students. Students are pleased to share their goal displayed for others to see. I’m proud of my students. Many focused on their challenges and wrote goals to help them in school.

Lesson 4

This lesson revolved around the students writing an action plan to list the steps they need to meet their goal. We began by reading the book Roger’s New Bike. We discussed Roger’s plan to get a new bike. I introduced the words-long term and short term to the students. I explained that the steps in their plan could be short term goals that help them meet their long term or big goal.

Next, we watched the video from our mentor and discussed Alex’s challenge for the month. The students began writing their own action plan.  Since many of the students had difficulty with this. I met with each student individually and went over their plan. As the students finished their plan, they worked on their goal star which contains their goal and plan among a few other items. Even though this month is coming to an end, the students in my class will continue to work on goals and actions plans.

Goal Setting in 5M

Our school was very happy to get back to normal after our evacuation on May 3rd.  Kids were excited to get back into routines and happy to move up to grade 5.  This is my fourth year as a CC classroom and it makes me so happy when kids come to grade 5 and already know what the program is about.


Goal setting is always an important part of the beginning of a school year.  We talked about short term and long term goals.  What I stressed were the steps that you need to take to accomplish your goal.  Another idea that we discussed is having an accountability buddy to check in with you and keep you on track.


We're also a Leader in Me school so this month we talked about being proactive.  This means 'being in charge of me'.  I hope that students realized they are the ones responsible for making their goals a reality.


I always think of Heatherle saying that goals should be visible and something that you revisit.  It doesn't do any good to make a goal then put it away until June and see if you accomplished it.  You need to keep working on it.


The kids are super excited about our athlete, Marsha Hudey!  It was so excited to see that she watched our 'welcome to our journey' video!  We look forward to a great year with CC!



Today was also our annual Terry Fox Walk.  Terry is a great example of someone who set a goal and persevered through very challenging times.  Again, I'm so happy to see how CC fits into almost any lesson that I'm teaching.

Isioma sharing her goal