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.

Let's go fishing /colours

 Let's go fishing!

Here's a fun idea that students enjoyed while learning colours!

Print in colour different kinds of fish  (e.g red fish clipart etc...) 

Put a paper clip on top.

I bought the fishing rod from a toy store with less than 3 euros.Alternatively, if you have a small magnet, tie a string around it and perhaps a wooden stick or a straw. 

You can see here how to make a handmade  fishing game.

fishing game

Young learners will love it! Ask them to catch the RED fish or the GREEN fish etc. You can have a timer or count up to 10 with the whole class. 

The pictures speak for themselves!

If you want to practise numbers as well you can print these cute fish from Super Simple Songs!

fish and numbers

While some students are fishing others can make their own fish bowls!

                                                  

                                                https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/

Digital Libraries

 I love offering stories, extra material, songs and videos!

The libraries give students the chance to practise in a fun way!

Explore here:digital libraries

Ηealthy Unhealthy

 

A nice and fun craft activity that will be unforgettable for the students!

You need two mouths and BEANS!

You can use these mouths: Mouths

or the mouths in the picture below

The students can paint the beans with a black marker but personally I used black beans.

It was so much fun!

We also love singing this song:Healthy food

We also made healthy and unheathy plates! The templates are from "sparklebox".

https://www.sparklebox.co.uk/topic/world-around-us/food/healthy-eating.html

And this link for games:Games

Earth day

Every Drop Counts!

This took place in our school as part of the Earth Day!

Students brought bottle caps and we  did our best to get the message across!

 Every drop counts!

It was a goup activity that students enjoyed!

Another idea is make a robot out of recyclable materials! Or things that you would throw away!

The little ones can make Earth Puppets!

And they can join them altogether saying We love Earth!

Mascot
 

Shapes

 

Here's a fun game if you want to spice up your lesson!

 how to play:

3 teams (one stands in front of the circle, the other one in front of the triangle, and the 3rd one in front of the square)

A student or the teacher rolls the dice and everyone has to say the shape that appears. 

If the circle appears on the dice, then the student who is standing in front of the blue circle moves forward. The same applies for every shape ...The first team or player that reaches the other side is the Winner!

They will enjoy every minute of it!

Here's a link with games and songs for extra practice

shapes

Clothes

We had so much fun with my 3rd graders! While learning Present Continuous and clothes, we described what we are wearing and then ....as you can see in the picture, they stood up, picked different clothes and started describing what the boy is wearing!

The template of the boy I chose:

copy paste the photo in a word file and make it bigger or smaller.

Then print the clothes in different colored hard paper and cut it. Make sure the size fits!

You can find the clothes online(The students can do the same activity in their notebooks and write a paragraph)

Dress a boy/ girl

Young learners love this song too!

Clothing Song

One nice craft activity is to make these cute washing machines!

You need a paper plate and two bottle caps!

Let's wash our clothes!