Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Planning resources: Goal Setting

Goal Setting





Planning meeting recording, which includes Welcome to Our Journey Goals slides  are here, but will make more sense as part of the recording.






Family newsletter in English and in Spanish












A preview of the planning manual. All weird formatting errors are totally Heatherle’s fault because Evan did not make this draft spiffy.











This month's video lesson may contain several big points:

  1. The definition of a goal
  2. Why goal setting skills are important
  3. The types of goals (long or short term, personal or academic, etc.)
  4. How the mentor set goals in his or her own life
  5. The importance of telling others about your goals
  6. A challenge to students to set their own long term and short term goals, and to share them with each other, their families, you, and your mentor.
You may want to prepare for watching the video lesson by:
  1. Planning for vocabulary development as needed
  2. Choosing an anchor text about goal setting
  3. Thinking over what sort of anchor chart or graphic organizer you will want to use
  4. Preparing a place in your classroom to display student goals throughout the year, or to help students record their progress over the year.
I'm sharing lots of information that might be helpful. Please pick and chose what makes sense to you.

Mentor texts and read alouds will be at the bottom of this blog entry.

Vocabulary Development
  • Create a working definition of "Goal." The mentor videos have some really good ideas on this, and it might even be worth watching just the first minute of several to see different people's takes on this topic.
  • Aspects of goal setting to take into account when creating a definition might be:
    • specific
    • measurable
    • time related
    • something the person wants to do (personal investment)
    • can be broken down into steps
    • with support, it is something a person could really make happen


Need a video?
This four-minute animated TedEd video by Steve talks about decision making, consistency, and sometimes adjusting the plan on the way to a goal.

Anchor charts, graphic organizers, and displaying goals
The very best examples of this are the lessons created by the 2014-15 group of Classroom Champions teachers. They used everything from goals written on clouds, to mini me drawings on paths and tracks and roads, to dreamcatchers, banners, sentence strips, and photos of students holding signs. Teachers displayed goals on walls, classroom doors, ceilings, taped to desks, and inside of personal journals.

The target chart (pictured) and a pyramid (first introduced in this classic video lesson) have both been effective graphic organizers over the years.

This blogger uses a hand as a graphic organizer.

Quotes to Inspire Discussion
Teachers use these to spark discussion, as writing prompts, as a greeting in the morning on the board.

“Failure is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently”
- Henry Ford

“The biggest mistake you could ever make, is continually fearing you’ll make one”
- Elbert Hubbard

“Giving up on your goal because of one setback is like slashing your other three tires because you got a flat”
- Unknown

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” - Zig Ziglar

      Goodread’s list of quotes about goal setting
      Top 15 Goal setting quotes here.
      Inspirational quotes about goals and goal setting.
      50 goal quotes that will inspire and motivate you.

Small Bits of Inspiration
      A google image search for “goals + inspiration” yields great visuals to inspire your goal setting practices!
      On the Importance of Goals - 6 Reasons Why You Need to Set Goals
      Some funny, some touching, all inspiring on this Edublog - “The Best Video Clips on Goal Setting”
      One-Step-at-a-Time Goal Achieving Cartoon Doodle Video
      Good visual reminder - “5 Ways to Follow Through on Your Goals”


Ideas specifically for olders:
You might like this Omeleto video of a spoken word poet talking about regrets, and how taking healthy risks is good and we all need to magnify our gifts.

This article is about identifying a need in the world, and going after the solution. Steve’s TEDx Calgary talk relates to this as well.


A few interesting resources for you as a learner:
CC friend (and Steve, Elana, and Akeem’s coach) Stu MacMillian is an interesting follow on Twitter and Instagram. He is a big reader, and often summarizes big ideas on his feed. Here are his thoughts on how to give feedback around goals.

NPR recently reported on a research project in participated in writing exercises around goal setting erased the gender and race gap among 700 students. (Thank you Janet Ilko for this link)

A TED playlist of goal setting and decision making talks, including one of my favorite TED talks ever: Diana Nyad and her swim from Cuba to the US at age 64.

How goal setting -- and running -- help the homeless, from All Things Considered.


Anchor texts for Goal Setting
The best way to learn about setting and accomplishing goals is to analyze the methods of people who have successfully done that. Biographical texts of innovators and accomplished people are going to lay out the process in an easily understood way. Finding a biography of someone relevant to another subject area you are working on this month is a great way to integrate Classroom Champions topics into your core curriculum. 

Here are some favorites, appropriate for most grade levels. The links are to Goodread because those listings contain the information that you need to order the book from the library.

Read Alouds & Mentor Texts (Picture Books)
Beautiful Oops! - Barney Saltzbur            
The Dot - Peter H. Reynolds
Ish - Peter H Reynolds
Keep an eye out! The companion, What Do You Do With a Problem? is about the be released!
Rosie Revere, Engineer - Andrea Beaty
In the same series, check out Iggy Peck, Architect & Ada Twist, Scientist
There - Mary-Louise Fitzpatrick
The Perfect Percival Priggs - Julie-Anne Graham

      Goal Setting picture books for kids here.
      Best children’s books for teaching about goal setting and ambition here.
      Read alouds to inspire hopes and dreams here.
      14 Books to inspire children to follow their dreams (many great biographical stories with stunningly beautiful pictures)

Read Alouds (Novels & Non-Fiction)
Arcady’s Goal - Eugene Yelchin

For middle school students, try the narrative, nonfiction profiles of innovators and dreamers in magazines like National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Wired, and Fast Company.
Want more? A roundup of biographies by Goodreads, Barnes and Nobel (including some graphic novels and books for older students), and Powell's Books (mostly middle readers).

This list from A Mighty Girl features inspirational books with and for girls, including hard work, perseverance, and goal setting.

For middle school students, I am also a big fan of the narrative nonfiction profiling innovators and dreamers in magazines like National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Wired, and Fast Company.









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