Future Leaders- Macro and Micro Goal-Setting

Over several class periods, students will brainstorm what world problems exist that they want to try to come up with a solution for. On one big poster-board split into several sections, each student or group of students find supporting images from magazines, newspapers etc, that illustrate the issue. They then provide a short written summary describing the issue, why they chose it, and what they would do to solve it. It is a collaborative PBL that enhances writing and critical thinking, as well as creative production. Students present their work to their classmates, and the poster is displayed for all classes to see. It takes about 3 class periods to complete everything.

In a separate class period, students formulate ideas of where they see themselves in the future, in 10 or 15 years depending on their current age. Students will pre-write all the discussions in their notebooks before the teacher transfers them to a digital fake whatsapp file. Print the conversation and display in the classroom for students of other classes to read and enjoy. This typically can be completely in one-two lessons.

As an end of year project, we create a yearbook with Canva of memories from English class. We include pictures and videos of projects, best games, nominate students for categories such as most likely to win a Nobel peace prize, become a prized author, or be a CEO of a company etc. The first class period students will create the table of contents to determine what to include in the yearbook, and each section takes about one class period to do the collaborative and individual work. This takes several lessons to complete, because the Canva graphics are also student-generated with the guidance of the teacher. Depending on class size, it can take up to a month to reach a finished project that will be shared with parents.