Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Oh the Places You'll Go

Goal Setting
Oh The Places You’ll Go

I spent the first of January focusing on goal setting with all my grades. For first and second, I wanted to find a way to incorporate goal setting while also discussing perseverance, the importance of goal setting, and why we don’t give up. For this topic I thought Dr. Seuss's "Oh the Places You’ll Go" would be the perfect fit! I found a great interactive video of Oh the Places You’ll Go on YouTube. The video puts the story in motion-more like a movie-instead of me just reading to them. They loved the video!


Before the video, I asked the students:
“What is a goal?”
“What does it mean to set a goal?”
“Should we set goals, and why?”

Once the students realized we weren’t talking about soccer/basketball :) they did really great coming up with ways we can set goals and why we should set goals for ourselves. After the discussion I played the video.

Once the video was over, I asked students if there were things that got in the way of our friend’s journey. They loved telling me all about how his air balloon popped! We then discussed that sometimes when we set our goals, something can get in the way and make it really hard to achieve our goals. I then asked the students if we should give up when things got difficult-I got a very confident (and loud) NO!!!!! They did so well when I asked them why we should never give up. One answer really made me laugh-“Well if we just gave up, we’d just be couch potatoes not doing anything”. :)

First grade: I then passed out a blank hot air balloon that said “My Goal”. Students were told to write down their goal and decorate their hot air balloon. I told students their goals could include something at school, home, maybe something they want to be when they grow up, somewhere they want to travel, etc. Overall, the project turned out VERY cute and the students really put some time into their goals on their hot air balloon. VERY proud of first grade!
I found the hot air balloon in a simple Google search and I wrote “My Goal” and made copies-easy enough!



Second grade: I passed out the “Oh the Places I’ll Go” handout. This hand out had a street sign with many different arrows pointing in all different directions. We talked about how our goals can take us down many paths and journeys and we have to decide which path is best. The students were instructed to write their goals on the arrows then decorate their arrows. Again, this project turned out very nice and the students did really well in thinking about their goals for the future!

I found the arrows activity on Teachers Pay Teachers at the Glitter is Everywhere store. This was a FREE download!

First Grade Hot Air Balloons:








Second Grade Arrows: 






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