September Goal Setting with Lex Gillete

September : Goal Setting

We began by watching a youtube video called Audri's Rube Goldberg Monster Trap. The link is here:
https://youtu.be/0uDDEEHDf1Y?list=PLh6K5ZpyE1u4iLRSkzWufpe497FwAxC1m. In the video a boy has built a complex set of reactions that ultimately end up with a monster getting trapped. The important part of the video is that he predicts it will only work a couple times out of about 20 tries. When it does not work he does not get upset, he just keeps trying and when it does finally work he is so excited. I thought it was important to front load some of these ideas for my students so that when they watched Lex's video they would already be thinking about persistence as a necessary part of reaching our goals.
My students were so incredibly excited to watch Lex's goal setting video after watching his introductory video. They already feel like he is their friend. I wish he could have heard them cheering when he said our class's name! Lex did such a great job of explaining goal setting in a way that the students could understand it. After the video we had a discussion about what sorts of long term goals my students have and how we can do lots of things along the way to meet our big, long term goals. At the end of the lesson the students wrote and drew their long term goals. We hung them up in the classroom and my intention is to keep them up all year and repeatedly refer to them. I want to keep the discussion going all year about what short term goals they can work towards now to reach their long term goals. For example, if they want to be a teacher, they need to learn how to read and write in First Grade so that they can graduate elementary then high school and then go to college. I can already see how participating in Classroom Champions is affecting our classroom climate and helping the students become even more excited about school and learning.