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!