In a comment to an earlier post it was mentioned that many second grade teachers are noticing that their students aren’t able to identify their “Dream”… or their “Big Dream”.  I’ve noticed the same thing.

I’ve  have asked second grade students (and even first graders) to write their “Dream” on a star, after I’ve read The North Star, and we’ve discussed the story.  After reading the dedication, I ask students what the author meant by a “dream”.  Some kids are confused by the kind of dreams we have at night when sleeping, but others realize the author is talking about something that you want to do some day, or something you want to be some day. 

All in all, how to identify our dream for the future is something that is learned - it’s not an innate ability, and it’s something children can only wrap their brains around when they’re developmentally ready.  Second graders are still very much in the “here and now”.   In other cases, I’ve worked with fifth graders who greatly limited their “Big Dreams” because of their families’ socio-economic status. One boy wouldn’t even let himself consider the possibility of going to college some day because his parents never went to college.  I still encouraged him – saying that for his Dream Star, I wanted him to dream big…  if anything was possible, what would his “Big Dream” be?  It was amazing to see his face light up.

Eventually it occurred to me that it might be helpful to have students identify some of their interests, strengths and talents before trying to identify  their “Big Dream”.  I now start the activity by having students identify the interests of the boy in The North Star, and then, based on his interests (i.e. leaves, nature, animals, floating things, building things, helping others), I ask students to speculate what the boy’s “Big Dream” might be. Students often come up with being a veterinarian, an architect, a park ranger, an animal shelter owner, etc.  Students then each fill out an “Interest, Strengths and Talents” survey, and use their completed survey to help them come up with their “Big Dream”.  This approach has really opened up the “Dream Star” activity in a whole new way – and has become very enlightening to students, to not only realize how many interests, strengths and talents they have, but to then think of a dream they’d never considered before… based on interests they have right here in the “here and now”.

I’m uploading the lesson plan for this “Dream Star” activity that includes the modified “Interests, Strengths and Talents” survey, and the “Star” template (the Star template is also found in the North Star Classroom Resource Guide).  Click here to download the lesson plan PDF.

Here’s to cheering on all our young dreamers!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 6:41 pm by Maribeth Bush and is filed under General, How Are YOU Using The North Star?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.