Teaching Values: Goal Setting

 As a child , I always tried to please my parents and do the "right" thing. 

When I pointed at someone, my mum used to say " It's not polite!" She was trying to teach me values!

Some common  values are developed through our role models (parents, teachers,peers), some legends or people that we look up to and definitely through stories! Stories that our parents used to read before bedtime, stories that we came across during school lessons,stories that promoted the common good!

As educators, we are interested in building positive, honest, good citizens, aren't we? In other words, we want to find a way to help our students develop good values and virtues. It's about being a human! Whatever your culture,background,language, you cannot be successful, without being a responsible, respectful or kind person. 

Everything we do in class as teachers influences the kind of human-beings students become. School values will help our students understand what is a good or bad choice, set  goals, understand what is important or not and be better prepared for future life!

Teaching the right attitudes is just as important as developing their academic skills. Thus, we are not just teachers, we are role models and we need to demonstrate these traits and expose our students to these important values.

Setting Goals:

                                                             Ruby's Wish

Ruby is different from other girls in Old China. She is determined to go to university when she grows up, just like the boys in her family. This young girl is full of ambition. Has she set her goals or is she just dreaming? Well Ruby has set goals and she works hard to achieve them.

This is how we started discussing about goal setting with my students. We then discussed the difference between goals and SMART goals.

And we played here:SMART

As a follow up activity, students can complete these arrows and write about their smart goals.