With my wonderful PLN on Twitter, I was talking about ways to start the New Year other than the traditional New Year's resolutions. Thanks to a conversation with my friend, Ally, @FlyontheCWall, I decided to be brave and begin a new exercise in 4th grade the first day back from our winter vacation and completed it the following day. As it’s a new year, it’s always a great time to re-examine goals and ideas about who we want to be.
I began by challenging 4th graders to think and brainstorm about who they want to be in 2012. I asked questions like:” What is something you want to be able to say about yourself?” “What is a quality or an action you want to be known for?”
We watched this brief video, based on Daniel Pink’s, “What’s Your Sentence?”
What's Your Sentence?: The Video from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.
The next day, students took their brainstorms from the first day and wrote “their sentences”. Below are some photos of the results. Pretty impressive, especially for 4th graders! Such a positive way to begin 2012!
As you start 2012 with your students, how will you inspire them to make choices that lead them to who they want to be?
