Motivation to Achieve

Who's ready for a three-day weekend?!? Me, me!!! ;-) I had a wonderful week here at school, this week, even though I am now ready for the weekend! This week I was in 4th and 5th grade classrooms for lessons and wrapped up lessons for the year! Can't believe we are already so near to the end! It was harder to say it was my last lesson for the year to 5th grade classes because they won't be back next year, but I know they will do so well in middle school and are excited for that big change. This week I gave a lesson on the motivation to achieve and reaching your goals. We started by watching a very inspiring video about a young man named Richie Parker who was born with no arms, but went on to achieve such amazing things. One of those things being working for Hendrick Motorsports, a company that does work for Nascar, as a vehicle engineer! He is pretty amazing and inspiring, but you can see for yourself.




I then had the students work on a sheet that had a ladder drawn on it and they were to write a life goal they have at the top of the ladder and write the steps it would take to achieve that goal on each step of the ladder until they reached the top, their goal. They then repeated this on the other side, which had another ladder for a school goal. It was very neat to see all the different goals they had! We had a great discussion about not giving up when you get frustrated or make a mistake, but to keep going and achieve all of your goals and dreams. Richie Parker did it with no arms, so we can do it, too!

Today was also an exciting day because my Hip Hop group performed their last performance for the school year! They got to perform in their pajamas for this one because the song was about not wanting to wake up from a good dream. We also shared a video before we began dancing sharing all of our hip hop kids' biggest dreams. They did such a great job and I can't wait to continue with Hip Hop next year and maybe see some new faces!

Serious pose...

...and of course they had to do a silly pose, too! 

I received some beautiful flowers from Pamela, a first grade student in Hip Hop and her mom, who is a custodian at our school, too!! So thoughtful and pretty! :-) 

I hope you all have a wonderful three-day, Memorial Day weekend!!