SELF-DETERMINATION; GOALS SETTING

NAME

INSTITUTION

COURSE NUMBER AND NAME

INSTRUCTOR’S NAME

Date

Content Area or Developmental Focus: Self-determination; goals-setting

Age/Grade of Children: 6TH grade

Length of Lesson: 50minutes

Goal
By the end of the lesson, Bianca and other students will understand the importance of goals and know how to set them.
Objective
Bianca and other students will be aware of the importance of goals.
Bianca and other students will understand the difference between realistic and unrealistic goals.
Bianca and the other students will be able to use the SMART goal checklist to set smart goals.
Standards Included
4.0
Bianca and other students will understand and be able to explain the importance of goals.
7.0
Bianca and the other students will be able to come up with SMART goals using the SMART goal assessment technique.
Materials
Reaching my goals handout
Books
Pencils
Different color marker pens.
Introduction
Begin by asking the students what they aspire to be in the future I.e. their career. Ask them about short term goals as well, e.g. getting their parents to buy them a toy or another form of gift after excelling in an examination. Make the discussion as exciting as possible e.g. by incorporating humor, having several students come to the front of the class to explain their aspirations e.t.c.
Share with them your aspirations to become a teacher and all the effort you put into it. Be sure to mention the challenges you faced as well as the support you received towards achieving your goal.
Share a success story about a popular person e.g. Ben Carson. Be sure to have researched such a popular person to gather information about them.
Lesson Development
Instruct the students to take out their books and number 1 to 4. Ask them the following four questions and let them write four answers in the respective areas they numbered.
If a fairy or an angel was to grant three wishes, what would you wish for?
If you were given 1 million dollars, how would you use it?
If you were to live for the next 6 months only, what would you be doing?
What is it that you wish to accomplish the most when you grow up?
Give them 3 minutes to write answers to these questions.
Afterward, ask who is willing to share their answers with the rest of the class. Choose around 3 students to share their ambitions.
Have each student who is presenting their goals come to the front of the class to do so.
Make that discussion as interesting as possible by letting them dig deep about those ambitions I.e. Let them explain their ambitions using more words than they used answering the questions on paper (which was most likely one-sentence answers).
Distribute the Reaching my goals handout to all the students and instruct them to list two academic improvements they would like to make as well as personal goals they would like to accomplish.
Introduce the SMART criteria for assessing goals. Write the word SMART vertically on the whiteboard using different colors.
Explain to the student that goals should not just be big and exciting, but also smart. Go ahead to explain the meaning of each letter in the word SMART and its importance to a goal.
Ask them to quickly develop a smart goal. Give them some minutes then choose one student who wishes to share their smart goal.
Write the goal on the whiteboard and assess if it is a smart goal together with the students. Analyze with them whether the given goal incorporates all the 5 components of a smart goal.
Distribute a second set of reaching my goals handout and instruct them to revise the 2 academic and 2 personal goals they had written on the Reaching my goals handout, this time modifying them to become smart goals.
Collect the revised goals handout for assessment.
Differentiation
Begin the lesson by asking students about their career goals and aspirations. This is interesting as they will be enthusiastic to share their big goals. This will make the lesson interesting right from the beginning.
Share the story of your journey to becoming a teacher. This will shed more light on the goals topic as they will have a real-life story to relate to. Additionally, share the success of another prominent person e.g. Ben Carson, whom the students already know and like, to create interest on the topic.
The first activity of answering the questions you will give engages the lesson I.e. it is a physical activity. It creates engagement as the students think and write right.
Instructing students to come to the front of the class makes the lesson interesting as students will enjoy hearing from each other, as well as attracts attention as all eyes will be fixed on the presenting students. Furthermore, people enjoy sharing their ambitions thereby, this will be an interesting activity.
Incorporate humor and other activities of making the lesson fun as the students present their ambitions. Be sure to allow them to share as much information as they would like to.
Write the word SMART in bold, each letter with a different color, and explain each component slowly referencing real-life examples e.g. how your goal of becoming a teacher was Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
Assess a sample goal together with the students.
Let students write 2 academic and 2 personal goals before you teach them the SMART technique then let them revise the goals after teaching them the technique.
Assessment
(Practice/ Checking for
Understanding)
Perform formative assessment by letting one of the students develop a goal (before teaching them the SMART technique) then analyze the goal together with the students after teaching the SMART technique.
Collect the revised goals for summative assessment at the end of the lesson.
Closing
Explain to the students that goals are inevitable.
Review the meaning of each letter in the word SMART.
Review examples of smart goals.

Justification.

The lesson is about setting goals. Learning to set smart goals is requisite for a student to be self-determinant. Bianca’s assessment has shown that she incapable of setting long term goals and planning. Hence, dedicating this lesson to setting smart goals is ideal for Bianca being her weakness as well as necessary to teach her self-determination at large.

Introduction

The introduction provides background information about goals ie. Talking about the students’ goals, the teachers’ success journey, and a prominent person’s success story. This makes the lesson interesting and creates enthusiasm among the students.

Differentiation

Letting the students share their ambitions makes the lesson interesting. Consequently, they will be excited to learn more about goals and will grasp most of the concepts that will be taught (Cohen & Spenciner, 2009).

Sharing your personal goal of becoming a teacher and how you came to achieve it will give students a real story to relate to. This will foster deeper memory retention of the lesson’s concepts. Sharing a prominent person’s success story has the same effect (Briggs, 2015).

Giving students questions to answer in the middle of the lesson creates engagement as the students write down. This breaks the monotony of listening to you explain concepts thereby preventing boredom. It is a multisensory approach that fosters a deeper understanding of the topic (Briggs, 2015).

Letting students come to the front of the class to share their ambitions will also make the lesson exciting as students enjoy sharing information and also attracts attention as the students focus on whoever is at the front. This is a multisensory approach that is effective for students like Bianca, especially the visual component (Moustafa, 1999).

Making the lesson interesting e.g. through humor, body movements, e.t.c.fosters deeper understanding as students get stimulated visually (ideal for Bianca), emotionally, and through listening (Moustafa, 1999).

Writing the word smart with different colors leaves a deep visual imprint that fosters memory retention (Moustafa, 1999).

Assessing a sample goal with the students fosters better mastery of how to formulate goals as you analyze with them how the goal is or is not smart. The concept attainment technique also comes into play as they reason whether the goal is smart or not (Boulware et al, 2008). The same applies when you have them write down goals before teaching how to formulate smart goals and then instructing them to revise goals after teaching them how to develop smart goals.

References

Cohen, L. & Spenciner, L. (2009). Teaching students with mild and moderate

disabilities: Research-based practices (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

Publication.

Boulware, B. J., & Crow, M. L. (2008). Using the concept attainment strategy to enhance

reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 61(6), 491-495.

Ackerman E. (2020). Goal Setting For Students, Kids, & Teens(Incl. Worksheets & Templates). Retrieved 23rd September 2020 from

https://positivepsychology.com/goal-setting-students-kids/

Moustafa Martin (1999). Multisensory Approaches and Learning Styles Theory in the Elementary School: Summary of Reference Papers. Retrieved 23rd September 2020 from

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED432388.pdf

Briggs(2015). Refuse to be Boring Teacher: 15 Ways to Have More Fun. Retrieved 23rd September 2020 from

https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/refuse-to-be-a-boring-teacher/