Children Dreaming Big - Part Two
A few weeks ago Maribeth wrote about the challenge of getting children to dream big. This is my second year of working with the North Star in my second grade classroom. This year I was more prepared to help the children understand what it means to “dream big,” and I was very pleased with the results.
Here are some of our BIG DREAMS for the year.
- to be an Olympic gymnast
- to go to Hawaii and live on a boat
- to dig a giant hole
- to own a jewelry store
- to make the biggest cookie in the world
- to go to all the places listed in the book, The 1000 Places to See Before You Die
- to work at a zoo
- to go to Cuba
- to be the most famous baseball player ever
- to have lots of friends
The wonderful thing that happened after the wonderful thing of discussing dreams is that I discovered there are numerous lessons and activities I can generate based on their dreams (who knew!!) For example, I was able to purchase the 1,000 places book and have it in our classroom library. I have observed the child whose dream it was to go to these places looking through the book and sharing the places with other children - instant geography lessons upon which I can build. I found a book about two children who wanted to dig a giant hole and gave it to the child with the giant hole dream - instant reading motivation. I happened to have saved a story one of my former students wrote about a giant cookie. I was able to share that with the giant cookie child. I would like to have the two children correspond. The possibilities go on, and I feel like I have gotten to know the children in a different way because they have been able to share. And, their big dreams are all such fantastic story starters I am thinking of using them for a writing project.
We have just begun posting our Featured Journeys, which show the goals, including the big dream, of three students at a time on one of our classroom bulletin boards. It is a time for those children to reflect on their year-long goals and for the class to see what their classmates’ journeys look like this year. Those who are featured also choose a motivation PHR poster that they think would benefit themselves or the classroom at the time they are being featured. (They are usually right on with their choices.) I am hoping to take the big dreams and make them part of our learning in a special way as those children are being featured for a few weeks.
At the end of the year it will be interesting to see if the children have developed other big dreams or if they have kept their original dreams. I’ll keep you posted…
December 1st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Maryann,
The beauty of your activity to me is that kids aren’t bound by geography, economy, or authority! What I am frequently saddened by is secondary students who look at the obstacles to their dream instead of the path to their dream. If you ask a kid what they want to be, they tell you one thing….if you press on, you frequently get a totally different answer. One recent junior high student told me that he would like to be a pipe-fitter….when I asked if you didn’t have any obstacles, what would you want to be. “Someone who works in a zoo,” accompanied by a huge smile!
Your students are lucky to have someone so passionate!
Terry
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:03 am
Maryann,
I really like how your students’ dreams inspired you with new lessons and activities that enable students to see how what they learn now contributes to their dreams coming true. And in the course of learning more about a certain dream-related topic or activity, all students learn new things that might inspire even different, or more, dreams. It’s such a great way of both honoring your students’ current dreams, and helping then learn geography, science, and other subjects in a way that is most meaningful to them. Bravo!
Maribeth