Inquiry Project Report 2003:
Goal Setting in the ESOL Classroom


Leanne Ovalles, Gensis Center
















photo: Kristen McKenna
photo of Leanne Ovalles, seated, center, at final presentation

Introduction:

Currently, I teach ESOL at The Genesis Center in Providence. I have approximately 20 students, who range in level from high beginner to high intermediate. The students come to class 20 hours a week (4 hours a day, 5 days a week). They are from diverse cultural, educational and socio-economic backgrounds. Many of the students work full-time in the evening and come to class all day.

I have been teaching ESOL for over 9 years and have taught in variety of situations from 2nd grade to university level, in community centers, public schools and overseas. In addition to teaching ESOL, I teach yoga and I am currently enrolled in a training program to become a Life Coach (helping people to achieve their goals by creating an action plan and holding them accountable).


As part of the curriculum at The Genesis Center we have always attempted to do goal setting with our students. Often when we asked students what their goals were, they responded with very general goals such as: learn English, get a good job or have a better life. It often seemed that the students were not clear on their goals, and therefore it was difficult to determine if they had reached their goals. They often had very large goals, but didnıt seem to have any understanding of what it would take to reach that goal. In addition, students often couldnıt see past the obstacles they met when trying to reach even simple goals.

Since I was currently being trained to be a Life Coach and assist people in setting goals, it seemed natural for me to integrate this into my ESOL classroom. My question became "What happens when I integrate Goal Setting into my ESOL classroom?"

I mainly worked with students to:

  • reflect on their lives up to this point
  • develop a clear vision of their goals for the future
  • learn how to set goals and to take specific steps to reach their goals
  • increase self-awareness and self-confidence
  • I wondered how goal setting activities would change the atmosphere in my classroom? Would being more self-aware help students to become clearer about what they wanted in their lives? Would these activities help students to set clearer goals and be able to take steps to reach those goals? Would the students' self-confidence increase by achieve small attainable goals? Would students be able to make the changes they wanted in their lives inside and outside the classroom?


    How I Incorporated Goal Setting into my ESOL Classroom

    I worked with goals setting over a 7 month period in three main areas: I. Reflecting on Our Past, II. Creating Goals for the Future and III. Taking Steps Toward our Goals. I began with having students look back at what had happened in their lives up until this point. I felt it was important for students to identity and understand significant events in their lives and to assess where they were in their lives now, before we could begin to set goals for the future. After reflecting on the past, we moved on to creating a vision for the future. We began by expanding the possibilities of what students thought was possible in their lives and then we narrow it down to the 5 most important goals they wanted to reach. Finally, we set small weekly goals and reflected on our progress weekly.

    I. REFLECTING ON OUR LIVES

    The main purposes of the activities in this section were to have students identify the significant events in their lives, understand the lessons learned, and let go of the past and prepare for the future. These activities were also intended to improve the classroom dynamics by allowing all class members (students and teacher) to get to know each other at a deeper level. Activities in this section included reading life stories, making collages and giving presentations, writing and performing a life drama role-play, and doing a ceremony.


    Reading Life Stories

    We began by reading examples of other peopleıs life stories and making timelines of their lives. We studied the past tense verbs, and vocabulary related to life events and emotions. Then I asked each student to make a timeline of the important events in his/her life and share that with a partner.


    Making Collages and giving presentations

    I asked students to make a collage about their life. I asked them to choose pictures from magazines that represented something important that happened to them in the past, or something that represented their current life. I asked them to share their collage with a partner and then to write their life story based on their collage. Finally each student presented his/her collage to the class.


    Life Drama Role-Play

    ċI had students to work in groups of four to write a role-play that encompassed an important event from each student's life. I instructed them to have each student in the group talk about one event that changed his/her life. Then I asked them to put all the events into one role-play about a fictitious character, so that when doing the role-play the audience wouldnıt know which event happened to which student.

    At first students were confused and had a hard time with this activity. It required a lot of explaining on my part and if I were to do it again I would have a clearer example. Nevertheless, students were able to grasp the idea and did amazing role-plays. I learned so much about my students and the events in their lives that had made them who they were today. Some of the events that were depicted in the role-plays included one womenıs experience as a victim of domestic violence, a manıs experience of winning the Boxing Championship in his country and a womenıs difficulty in childbirth.

    In order to ensure the other students were engaged during the role-plays, and to practice the new vocabulary, I had them fill out a chart. On the chart they had to write down the 4 life events that were depicted in the role-plays and the emotions associated with that event.

    This activity was key in creating a strong bond in my class and helped students to get a fresh perspective on their lives. Here are some sample student comments from a feedback form on the Life Drama Role-play:

    "I liked it because we were learning emotions, other words, conversation in English and also we had fun."
    "The role-play can help me in my life, it can change me and it give me lessons about my life. I remember my past that I was happy and sad. I was overjoyed doing a role-play. "
    "You feel better when you told somebody else about your problems."
    "That experience made me to value the things I had before and the things I have now."
    "The life drama were realistic with the problems of everyday."
    "It can help me in my life, it can change me and it can give me lessons about my life."
    "Other people get to know me better so they understand me and can help me in any problem."

    Some students did not think it was helpful

    "I don't think that talking about my past can help me in my life, but talking about it donıt make me feel bad But I like doing the drama."
    "I dislike doing it because I get nervous. I learned I am not an actor."


    Letting Go and Preparing for the Future

    As a closing activity for this unit of reflecting on the past I did can activity with students reflecting on what they would like to let go of and what they would like to hold onto from the past. First I gave them a handout which explained how we can chose to let go of the things, thoughts or feelings that are no longer helping us. The handout had a space for the students to write the things they would like to let go of. On the other side of the handout it talked about how there thoughts, people and feelings can help to prepare us for our future, and the form had a space for the students to write what they were choosing to hold onto.

    Some examples of what students wrote:

    "I chose to let go of my stress to worry about the future my children. I chose to hold onto teaching my children the good things before they get married."
    "I chose to let go of the sadness that my mother died. I chose to hold onto good memories."
    "I chose to let of the stress that I donıt have enough money to live comfortably. I chose to keep the English I learned."

    Then we did a ceremony. I put the prompts "I choose to let go of _____" and "I chose to hold onto___" on the board. I used dried up leaves to represent what the students were letting go of and acorns to represent what they wanted to hold onto. I gave each student a leaf, placed a basket on the table and put a bunch of acorns next to the basket. I asked all the students to come and stand around the table. Then I explained that each student would walk up to the basket, and crumbled the leaf into the basket as they said "I choose to let go of ___." Then they would take an acorn (to keep) as they said "I chose to hold onto _____." Before we began I talked about the power of speaking our thoughts out loud to a group of people and I demonstrated what I was asking them to do. Then one at a time each student completed the ceremony.


    Student Responses to the Ceremony:

    This was a very empowering activity for the students. Of all the activities we did in this unit, this was the one they rated the highest. Students expressed that the activity helped them to let go of stress and to gain a new perspective on their lives. They were able to see that this type of activity could help them in their lives because they were learning English at the same time they were learning skills that would help them in the future.

    Here are some of the questions, and student responses from the feedback forms for the Ceremony:

    Did you like the activity? Why or why not?

    "Yes, because it helped us to forget about negative things in the past."
    "Yes, I liked it because almost only we think in the bad backgrounds but this exercise we need to save the good."
    "Yes, I liked the activity because sometimes I was the negative thoughts about the past and now I want to choose the positive thoughts in the future."
    "Yes, I think itıs a good idea because I felt better when I chose to let go of my sadness."
    "No because I donıt want to remember my past."

    What did you learn?

    "I learned to hold the positive things what happened in the past."
    "I learned to be analyst that all the happen around me and I learned about my teammates." "Everybody has been in troubles, but we must be strong."

    Do you think this could help you in life? If yes, how?

    "Yes, because at the same time we learn English, we get good experiences and awareness."
    "Yes, In the future it helps us to be more secure about our action and positive things in our lives."
    "Yes, we know how to the stress letting go."
    "Yes because I'll have good or bad experiences in the future and Iıll need to throw away the worst and keep the best."


    II. CREATING GOALS FOR THE FUTURE

    Once we had reflected on our past, we began to focus on creating goals for the future. I began to work with students to help them define what they wanted in their lives. I wanted to expand the possibilities of what students thought was possible in their lives so I began by having them visualize their dream life, make a collage about it. We followed up this up with discussions, writing assignments, a student presentation and an experience of setting small specific weekly goals. I concluded this section by asking students to review all the work we had done and to choose the 5 most important goals in their lives right now.


    Visualization and Collage

    I began by leading students through a visualization where they could imagine, without limits what their ideal life would be like. I asked them to see the details of how their life would look, what kind of job would they have, where would they be living, who were the people around them etc. After the visualization I asked students to take 15 ­ 20 minutes to cut out pictures in from magazines that represented their goals in their dream life. Then I asked students to write about their dream life.


    Presentations

    Each student then presented his/her dream life collage to the class. While one student was presenting I asked the other students to fill out a chart. They had to write down the name of the presenter, two of the presenterıs goals and they had to indicate if they had the same goal as the presenter or not. Students were very engaged during the presentations. I encouraged the presenters to practice the future tense with the form "I will have.." (rather than "I want.." ":maybe I " ) so that they could practice the grammar, and more importantly so that they could learn more about the effect of positive thinking.


    Educational, Career and Personal Goals

    We worked with goals in a number of different ways. One activity I had students do was to separate their goals into three categories Educational, Career and Personal. Students then interviewed each other about their goals. This helped students to clarify their goals and to learn more about each other.


    Setting Specific Weekly Goals

    The first time we did specific weekly goals was around a lesson we were doing on Luther King, Jr. We were reading about MLK Jr. and had just watched a very powerful video about his life. After viewing the "I Have a Dream" speech my students were very moved and I took advantage of that motivation to introduce specific goal setting. I wanted students to see that they had the power to do something to make the changes they wanted in the world and in their lives.

    I had each student write what their dream for the world was on one piece of paper, and then on another piece of paper I asked them to write one specific task/goal they could do this week to bring them one step closer to their dream. We brainstormed together and I put many examples on the board. It took students a while to grasp this concept and to have the task directly tied to the dream or goal they had listed, but eventually they got it. Here are some examples:

    "I have a dream that there will be no poverty."
    Goal "I will donate $10 to a charity."

    "I have a dream for peace in the world."
    Goal "I will pray for peace every night at 10 PM."

    "I have a dream that all people will have good health"
    Goal "I will talk about natural medicine."

    "I have a dream that all people live in nice place"
    Goal "I will try recycling."

    "I have a dream that the Government be equally with all people including Immigrants."
    Goal "I will write a letter to Mayor and talking about Immigrants."


    Follow-up

    At the end of the week I asked students to fill out a questionnaire about their experience and to indicate if they had completed their goal or not. If they had not completed their goal I asked them to reflect on why. Most of the students had completed their goal, a few of students had not but still had plans to do it, and a couple of students realized that the goal they set was unrealistic. We learned a lot by sharing why students hadnıt completed their goals. Some students had set large unrealistic goals and other students had set a goal that they really werenıt interested in.

    Goal Plan

    Finally I asked students to review their dream life story, and the personal, educational and career goals they had written, in order to identify the 5 most important goals in their life. Then we separated those goals into long term and short term goals. Students typed up these goal plans, kept a copy for themselves and we hung a copy up in the classroom.


    III. TAKING STEPS TOWARD OUR GOALS

    In the third phase of the project we focused on more specific goal setting. The purpose of these activities was for students to learn how to set realistic, measurable and specific goals. I hoped that by setting and achieving small goals, students would build self'confidence and that they would learn a process that they could use to achieve other goals in their lives. The activities in this section included identifying 'poor' goals and 'good' goals, setting weekly goals for learning English, and setting goals around different topics such as Time Management.


    Setting Weekly Goals for Learning English

    We began with a discussion of the characteristics of 'good' and 'poor' goals. We focused on having goals that were specific, measurable and realistic. Then we did a sorting activity where I gave students a number of examples of goals for learning English and they had to sort them into two categories for 'poor' goals and 'good' goals. I also asked them to explain why a goal was 'poor' or 'good'. For example a Œpoorı goal might be 'I will learn some English this week' (this is not specific or measurable) and a Œgoodı goal would be ³I will work one hour doing verb exercises this week²(this is specific, measurable and realistic). Students found this difficult at first, but it really helped to clarify what we had been talking about. This was a key activity in helping students to understand how to do effective goal setting.

    Next I had students set goals for themselves for learning English. Here are some examples of my students goals:

    "This week I will review my verbs three days at night from 9:30 to 10:00² "This week I will read my grammar two hours in the weekend."
    "This week I will learn 5 new words everyday."
    "I will eat breakfast earlier tomorrow, so I will leave my house earlier and I will be on time for class."
    "I will read English books one hour in my home on the weekend."

    After a couple of weeks of setting goals for learning English I asked students to reflect on their experience. Here are their answers to one of the questions I asked "Do you like to do goal setting?" "Yes, it help me to be enthusiastic and to organize my life"
    "Yes, because it helped me to improve my English."
    "Yes because if I continue to do the goals in this way it is very helpful for everything in my life."
    "Yes, Everyday I learn English, but sometimes I donıt conscious that. If I have a map, I do not lost the road. I want to continue to learn more about goals."


    Setting Goals for Time Management

    A few weeks later we were reading about different stress management topics in one of our books and I decided to try some goal setting around the topic of Time Management. After reading about some time management tips I asked students to set two goals for the week. Here are some examples of the students goals:

    "I will do my laundry on Sunday night this week because there are least people."
    "I will wake up earlier in the morning 1 hour to spend only myself time."
    "I will to make my schedule for this week."
    "I going to get up earlier 1 hour so I can make exercise."
    "I want to cook a lot of food on the weekend and in the week I will have more time to do another things."

    After setting goals for time management, we did a few more weeks of goal setting where students could chose to set any type of goal that they wanted. After a few weeks it became obvious that the students were losing interest in goal setting. I realized that in being so excited about my Inquiry Project I had probably done too much goal setting with my class. So I completed the goal setting activities at that time and I did not continue on with my plan to have students set goals related to their life outside of class.


    Data Collection Methods:

    I used four main data collection methods throughout my project. I used student surveys and questionnaires to get information about my students' experiences with goal setting. I used feedback forms to determine which types of activities students felt were most effective, and I kept a journal with my own reflections on the lessons. In addition, I conducted one on one interviews with a small group of students.

    Student Surveys/Questionnaires: Through out the project I used student surveys to better understand how students felt about goal setting, and to learn more about what types of goals they had for their lives. In addition, as I began to integrate goal setting into the classroom, I used questionnaires to determine if the students were utilizing the material that we were learning outside the classroom.

    Feedback Forms: I gave students feedback forms to determine if they felt the activities we were doing met their needs. I generally asked them to rate the activities on a scale of 1 to 5, and then asked some open-ended questions about what they found useful, what they didn't like and any suggestions for improving the lessons.

    Journal entries: I generally wrote my own reflections on lessons in a journal. This included making notes about how the activity went, how I would modify the activity in the future, any ideas for subsequent activities, and any anecdotal notes from my class observations.

    One on One Interviews: I met with a number of students in the class and had individual interviews with them about their experience with goal setting. This included a discussion of their previous experience with goal setting, as well as a discussion about the effects the classroom goal setting activities had had on their lives.


    What I Learned

    I found that goal setting is very effective in an ESOL classroom. Students were very interested in the topic and were able to grasp the concepts fairly easily. Students indicated that it helped them to focus on what was important in their lives and to clarify what they wanted. One student wrote "Goal Setting is important because if I donıt do that I forget what is the goal that I want to realize."

    Students were more self-aware, and aware of what they needed to do in order to accomplish that their goals. One student wrote "It helped me to make my goals to study at CCRI. Before I wanted to have a baby, but now I changed my mind." In addition, I found that students took more responsibility for their own learning, and saw that they could do many things outside of class to improve their English. One student commented "Now I do more reading. Before I was just sitting. Now I know I have to do more to improve my English."

    Students also gained a lot of self-confidence as they were able achieve small, manageable goals. One student wrote "I learned that if I want to learn I CAN DO IT!" When I asked students if the goal setting effected their life outside of class, many students said that they were now able to be more focused and had more confidence. One student shared a story of how her new found self-confidence had effected her home life. She described how her husband wanted her to stay at home for a field trip because she needed to take care of the children. She really wanted to go on the field trip so she told him that she wasn't going to stay home. She was able to work out a solution so that she could go. She felt that this change in behavior was directly related to the work we had done around goal setting and she was very proud of herself.

    Goal setting also improved the classroom dynamics. Students got to know each other at a deeper level and were more involved in each other's lives. They understood that they all faced similar challenges and they offered support to each other.

    What I Would Do Next Time I found goal setting to be a great fit for my ESOL classroom and I am sure that I will do it with my classes in the future. I would do many of the same topics and activities I did this year. The main change that I would make is that I would spend less time on goal setting next time around so that the students will not get bored with it. Perhaps limiting it to once a week for an hour and establishing a routine. I would also relate the goal setting to other topics we are learning in class (as I did with time management), in addition to English. Overall I believe that the lessons I did on goal setting were very successful and I learned a great deal from this project.


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