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Monday, November 8, 2010

Hopes and Dreams

In an earlier post, I wrote about the lesson I did on creating hopes and dreams for the year at the beginning of the year. Now that it is the end of the first quarter, our class revisited our hopes and dreams. We looked at the book Ish again and reviewed the boy's hopes and dreams about being a good drawer. We talked about some of the things we wrote about at the beginning of the year, and I asked the students if anyone had any new hopes and dreams for first grade. I was surprised at how many students had new goals for the year! The students got a new sheet of paper and wrote down their new hope and dream for the rest of the year. As they were writing, I went and gave them their first sheet so we could compare. There were a few students who still had the same hope and dream for the rest of the year; however, many of the students had changed their goal. It was fun to see that the students really were writing relevant and realistic goals for things that we are working on in class. Also, it was fun to read their responses now that I now the students so well and could match their hope with their personalities and the things I see them doing in class. The students got very excited over the assignment, and I did, too! It is so helpful for the students to be able to voice what they want to learn and see learning take meaning for them! I will for sure be revisiting the hopes and dreams at the beginning of the third quarter. :)

2 comments:

  1. Love it! I want to do this as well, however when we constructed our hopes and dreams we did it in a puzzle. They are all taped together and it would be a mess to take apart and put back together. Instead I had them go up and read their goals/dreams and then we created a new poster for 2nd quarter. I plan on doing this for each quarter. If I was "artsy" enought I could have each of their quarters match and make up an individual puzzle. Just a thought! Keep rockin!

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  2. That would be a great idea to make individual puzzles! I don't think I am that creative, but let me know how it goes if you try it. :)

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