Perseverance

The month of January (even though it is a short month for being in school) was a perfect time to talk about the meaning of perseverance.  At the beginning of the year, when we discussed goals setting, we talked about perseverance.  Students had some background knowledge about the meaning of it and most students knew that it means "never giving up".  Revisiting in January was great so that we could revisit some of our long-term school goals.  We wrote them in our reminders app on our ipads so when students came back from break we looked at how they were doing with their goals.  Many students were feeling a bit down because they were still really far from reaching their goals.  So we had a great discussion about perseverance and sticking with goals.

I asked them what would happen if we just changed our goals to make them much easier to reach, and they realized that we wouldn't be working as hard or pushing themselves to get better AND I was really proud when no one asked to change their goals!

When we watched Nate's video he brought something up that I hadn't really thought a lot about before.  He mentioned that  persevering is much easier when we share our struggles with others so they can help encourage us.  We talked about how a lot of times people don't really like to share things that they are having trouble with.  We brainstormed why we might share with others and the kids realized that we have an opportunity to help encourage and make people feel better; which is a powerful tool that can help people we care about persevere.

Nate challenged us to share with others something we are having struggles with.  Students shared out and then created motivational phrases and cartoons that could help our friends to "keep going".  Below are a few samples of some that they kids created.  They were really proud of their creations!   We have been putting them to good use.  We created a Perseverance Folder in Google Drive that student's have been going to when they need a "pick me up"!  That's just another fun way for kids to realize not only that they it is ok to have struggles but also that they always have their friends to help them through them.

As a side note, if you have the opportunity to use the coding program Scratch Jr., please do so.  My kids have created some really cool projects across all content areas.  I highly recommend trying the app out.  There are three samples below that students created to give a pep talk to their friends.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2
Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6 Attend to precision.