Building Relationships & Motivation
New Year New Goals
Let’s get 2021 off to a great start with this engaging, creative, and meaningful digital activity! With this goal setting activity, students reflect on where they have been, where they want to go, and how to get there.
This is a perfect activity to complete on your first day back from winter break! It will get your students motivated and thinking about what they want to accomplish in school and their personal life.
Product Includes:
4 reflection prompts that encourage students to think and write about what went well last year, their challenges, time wasting habits, and their future best self.
1 writing prompt that guides students in thinking about how they want their best life to look like one year from now.
3 goal setting templates that focus on the GROW goal setting method. For each key area of their life, academics, personal, and relationships, students write a goal, explain their current reality, develop organized steps to help accomplish their goal, and explain how it will feel when they win and reach their goal.
1 vision board template where students create a vision board based on their new goals. Students find images and quotes that relate to their goals and insert them into a Google Slide.
Student instructions in the speaker’s notes.
Download Includes:
PDF Link for 10 colorful and editable Google Slides
Teacher Instructions
Growth Mindset: Complete Capsule
Help students learn the power of their mindset and how to cultivate a growth mindset.
This capsule includes:
5 Journal Questions: These are designed to be beginning of class activities. They help students apply and understand growth mindset. (Google Docs)
Vocabulary Practice:
7 words, definitions, and examples to help students understand growth mindset: Diligence, Grit, Determination, Malleable, Resilience, Optimistic (Google Slide)
Activity: Students come up with a synonym, antonym, and insert and image that relates to each vocabulary word. (Google Doc)
Check In: Students write about a time they, or someone they know, demonstrated the vocabulary word. (Google Form)
Notes & Activities: 5 activities to help students develop an understanding of growth mindset.
Sorting Activity, Growth Mindset Notes, Growth Mindset Article, Motivational Message, Discussion Groups
5 Exit Tickets: Wrap up the concepts taught each day with a Google Form response question.
In years past, I would have students write goals maybe once or twice a school year. We would write them, be super motivated for 2.5 days, and then promptly forget about them when the days start ticking by.
I mean, I don’t eat ONE salad and run ONE 5K and expect results. Why would we write and review goals ONE time?!
If you’re reading this, I know you’re an AMAZING teacher. You WANT your students to succeed, to EXCEED their goals, to be the better then they could have ever imagined.
How can this happen? By reviewing, writing, and planning how to reach goals EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Just a 5 minute review as a pre-bellinger is all it takes to make goals meaningful and achievable.
This download includes...
Cover Sheet for Student Notebook
36 Week At a Glance Sheets with different motivational quotes. This is designed to help students Organize their week. {One for each week of school!}
36 Weekly Goal Focus Sheets with prompts for Goal Writing, WHY it’s a goal, Steps to achieve the goal, and Weekly Quote Reflection.
Daily Focus Sheets designed to help students stay focused on their goals every day.
.Progress Monitoring Graph so students can visually see their overall grade INCREASING as they reach their goals.
Learn all about your students with this creative and engaging digital activity!
Students will create photo collages all about their interests, friends & family, favorite things, and aspirations (5 templates total)
In addition, students are provided with a template to write a This is Me Poem to go along with the images.
Detailed instructions are included.
Product is a Google Drive direct download
If you are looking for a fun way to motivate and engage your middle school students, then this is the download for you! This is a complete guide to 3 incentives that can be used immediately in your classroom with minimal prep for you! For more on these incentives,click here to read exactly how I implement these incentives in my 8th grade classroom.
Incentive #1: Tickets
Complete & detailed description of how I use the ticket system in my classroom.
Incentive #2: Brain Bucks
Complete & detailed description of how I use Brain Bucks in my classroom.
Printable Brain Bucks for you to use in your classroom (editable!)
Detailed instructions on how to add your Bitmoji in order to customize your Brain Bucks.
Incentive #3: In Living Color
Complete & detailed description of how I use the poster in my classroom.
Printable Poster for you to use in your classroom (editable to fit your specific needs!)
Products are all digital downloads, PDF
Google Slides and Docs Links Included (for editing purposes)
Conversation journals are a great way to connect with your students and build a strong relationship with them! In addition, students work on writing and communication skills. Added bonus: It's all digital! That means no lugging journals around!
How it works:
Students write a letter to you at least once a week. In order to get the ball rolling, I have included 10 prompts.
You respond to their writing within the week.
Then the student will respond back to you developing a conversation.
Instructions and 10 prompts included
Google Docs format
It is important that we start building relationships with our students from day one. We need to get to know them- what makes them tick, what life experiences they’ve had, and what challenges they might be facing.
One way to get the ball rolling is to provide your students with a questionnaire that asks questions like, If you could choose one famous person to drive you to school everyday, who would it be and why? and If you were given a crystal ball that could tell you the truth about one thing, what would you ask it?
This download Includes:
20 Engaging and Creative Questions: These questions are designed to get your students really thinking about their interests and life.
Different Formats: Are you distance learning? What a tech option? Then this activity was designed for you! There is a Google Form, Google Doc, and PDF version to meet all of your needs.
Editable: What to remove or add questions? No problem! The Google Docs and Forms version is completely editable!
You are a great teacher (that's why you're checking out products related to building relationships) and you know how important it is to spend time getting to know WHO your students are before you jump head first into content.
This bundle will help you build and start to form those relationships from day 1!
What's Included:
1. Alpha Autobiographies: All this super simple activity has them do is think of something for each letter of the alphabet that represents something about them. Even though it’s simple, this one activity gives me 26 facts about each of my students, so that’s 26 opportunities to make a connection with them. Click on the link for a more detailed description of the product.
2. All About Me One Pager: One Pagers are a visual and written expression about a subject that is contained to one page. In order to make it more structured for your students, and to get quality information out of it, a guideline template is included for them!. Students will use the template as a guide to visually represent: Their name, favorite quote, favorite things to do, the history of their name (or the meaning), where they see themselves in 10 years, and words that describe them. When these are completed, they make great bulletin board displays!
3. Bottle Flip Question Game: This is a fast paced partner game where students get to flip water bottles Dude Perfect style while asking each other get to know you questions. I love walking around and hearing the answers to the random questions like, What animal best represents your dance moves, If you could ask your pet one question, what would it be, and what words of wisdom would you pass on to someone younger than you?
4. Teach the Teacher: This activity really lets your students shine and show off their amazing talents! Students give a 3-5 minute presentation about something they are interested in (I’ve had everything from learning about different wolves to learning how to Snapchat to learning how to tap on the table with my pencil to create a beat.) In their presentation, they tell you what they are going to teach you, the history or interesting facts about the topic, what they like about it, and what they want you to learn.
