What's Your Sentence?
by Joan Young
Goals
- To assist learners in discovering themselves, their passions, and strengths.
- To identify the skills that they will need to achieve their lifelong dreams.
Procedures
- Have learners view Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink.
- Facilitate a group discussion that addresses the questions, "What is something you want to be able to say about yourself?” and “What is a quality or an action you want to be known for?”
- Show learners the video clip where Dan Pink invited people all over the world to share their sentences.
- Ask learners to create their own sentences. This can be followed by having them blogging about to share their ideas and converse with a variety of people about these goals.
Adding the blogging part to this activity helps students refine their statements by talking about how they will achieve their goals, connecting to others who might share similar passions, and creating a positive vision of their future. Providing an authentic, global audience enriches this experience in remarkable ways. One student, upon realizing that someone from New Zealand had commented on her blog, yelled out in class, " Someone from New Zealand read my post!" Powerful stuff for a 4th grader!
Example Student Blogs
My sentence was: “She is creative and an up-lifting person.” I chose that sentence because I can be very up-lifting and a good friend sometimes and something can never get me mad forever. I also chose creative because I am a very creative person with a lot of ideas to spare. I will achieve this goal by being me. I guess because I couldn’t be any better than I am.
My Sentence is “She will trust herself” the reason I picked that is sometimes things are tough and and you've got to trust your self and make your best guess or decision. I am trying to reach my goal by trusting my self and working hard every day. I am deciding to figure out the answer and make my best guess.
This is my sentence: “He will dedicate his life to the pursuit of helping turtles." To do that I’ll have to study turtles in college, then become a biologist. It’ll be hard but I think it’s worth it! I am trying to help turtles because they’re endangered. They’re endangered partly because people throw too much trash in the ocean and a plastic bag looks like a tasty jellyfish to a turtle. Turtles are also my favorite animals, so that’s why I want to help them. What’s your sentence?
