GOAL SETTING

September 6th, 2022

During the first month of school, I like to do a lesson with all my students on how to set a meaningful goal. As a Leader In Me school, we focus greatly on the importance of setting a goal, tracking that goal and properly adjusting a goal when needed. I began the lesson by asking:

"Who here has set a goal?"

"Did you achieve that goal? How did you do it?"

"Did you not achieve that goal? What went wrong?"

I then asked students to think of something they want to achieve this year and to keep it in their minds for later.

After some brainstorming and sharing with the whole group, I had the students come up to the rug for some "magic" I had a stack of cups and a stack of notecards with my magic wand. I asked students "Do you think with a wave of my wand and the magic word, I can make these cups and cards stack into a tower?" We had mixed answers, some said yes some said no. I tried, no luck. I had two student volunteers try, no luck. I asked students "Why do you think the magic didn't work?" Many were confused. I had students think back to what they want to achieve this year and asked "Do you think you will achieve that goal by just waving a magic wand and saying the magic word?" They all said no. I then asked "What will it take to be successful at what you want to achieve?" Some example answers:

"Hard work"

"Practice"

"Time"

Students began to understand that while we can't magically make things happen. When we work hard and put our time and effort into what we want to achieve, we can see magical results!

For our activity, I split students into two groups. Each group is given 8 cards and 8 cups. They as a group have to set a goal of how many cups and cards they will need in order to make a tower. Once they set their goal, they were given 5 minutes to make the tower. Some groups succeed, some did not. We talked about what went well, what could have gone differently, what was challenging, etc. We connected this back to setting goals. When we set a goal, we hope that we will be able to easily achieve it, but sometimes it doesn't work out the way we plan and we have to go back and adjust that goal and reflect on what was working and what wasn't.

Next week, student's will be coming up with their own academic goal and social/emotional goal.

It was a fun lesson!