Thursday, January 5, 2012

Creating resolutions with my students


Reading
Just as I thought through my own resolutions last week, I asked my students to do the same. Students returned from Christmas Break on Tuesday and I began reading class with this Animoto video of all of my books from #bookaday.


After the video I shared with my students my Reading Resolutions blog post. We discussed the #nerdbery and #nerdcott challenges. While my students are not at all ready to join in those challenges, they did want to participate. As a result I created the ALA CHALLENGE.






We usually write a book response once every six school days. For anyone student who wanted to participate they will read one Newbery and two Caldecott award winners every month in lieu of the final monthly response. Many students were very excited about trying this out and rifled through my shelves and headed to the library to check out books so they could join in.

Writing
In Writing Workshop I shared my One Little Word (OLW) resolution with my students. I explained the concept and confided my choice for 2012, BE. I handed out the list of OLWs I had found on the internet and we split into groups to discuss what we wanted to work on for the year. The students all picked a word, either from the list or one that they thought of. They created a list of ways their OLW applied to them or how it would help them, and then created a journal about their resolutions for 2012.

Overall I felt like taking a day to go over our goals for 2012 was extremely beneficial. The students have seemed more focused for the remainder of the week. Also, some of the students picked OLWs that were extremely insightful and great goals for themselves. What type of lessons did you do with your students returning from break? Have you had them create resolutions before? Was it beneficial?