Perseverance

We started off the new year by revisiting our goals from the beginning of the year.  Once we determined which ones we had met and which ones we still needed to work on, we listed different things that might influence whether or not we met our goals.  For example:  family + friends, commitment to the goal, personal habits.  After determining what helped and hindered our success, students revised their current goals that they hadn't met yet and wrote new goals to replace ones they had accomplished.

To introduce the concept of perseverance, I read On a Beam of Light by Jennifer Berne, which tells the story of Albert Einstein's life.  The students were surprised to find out that Einstein had trouble in school and that people did not always believe his theories.  They were able to list many examples when he had to persevere in his life before he finally achieved his goals.

Watching Jesse's video about how he uses perseverance to overcome challenges inspired my students to write about their own experiences when they persevered and had a positive outcome. 

Jesse talked about two different behaviours that help him to persevere:  learning from mistakes and staying positive.  So these became the focus of our next two lessons.  We watched the video "Famous Failures"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLYECIjmnQs and shared our own experiences of when mistakes helped us to be more successful.  Then we created positive attitude posters that would inspire others not to give up and to persevere.

 

Our final task was to write a blog teaching others about perseverance this month.  After reviewing what we learned, we used the R.A.F.T. strategy to give students choice as to how they would write this opinion piece.  We brainstormed different possible Roles they could take and who their Audience might be.  Then we listed possible Forms their blog could take and what Topic (opinion) they were focusing on with their writing.

This was an excellent way to start the new year.  We found many opportunities throughout the month to make connections to what we were learning about perseverance.  Here is a list of times during the month when the students had to persevere to be successful.