Lesson Plan Workshop: Define Your Goal

General Plans for the Workshop:
My plan for this workshop is that I will post a new post each Tuesday. Each post will cover the next step in creating a personalized lesson plan. I will be breaking things down into bite-sized chunks to fit into everyone's busy schedules. I would like to utilize the comments section as a place for you to ask questions or share your assignment for the week. I will also answer questions in the comments section. I just learned that you do need to sign in to blogger in order to post a comment, so you will need to create a Google/Blogger account in order to participate in that way.

I have set it up so that you can enter your email address and new posts will be delivered to your email. But as far as I understand it, you will still need to come to the blog and sign in to leave a comment. I am new to all of this, so I apologize if any of the technical details seem confusing.

For the workshop, the only thing you will need is a tablet or your favorite word processing program and your brain. Each week's activity will require you to do some thinking and writing on a topic. The topics will build on each other so that at the end you will have a personal lesson plan for you and your horse, and you also will know how to create future lesson plans.

Define Your Goal
Spend a little bit of time thinking about a goal that you would like to focus on for the purpose of this workshop. Some examples of the types of goals you could use are as follows:

• A big picture goal, such as "I would like to happily and safely ride my horse on trails by myself".
• A general feeling goal, such as "I would like to feel happy and harmonious as I interact with my horse".
• A specific goal, such as "I want to be able to participate successfully in the July trail ride".
• A specific skill, such as "I want to be able to ride flying lead changes with my horse" or "I want to teach my horse to stand still at the mounting block".
• A problem solving goal, such as "I want to help my horse get over being herd sour".

As you are thinking about this goal and writing it down, try to phrase your goal in such a way that you feel happy and inspired about the thought of accomplishing it. This helps to provide the motivation for following through later when you start to implement your lesson plan.

If you are having a hard time coming up with a goal, here are some tips to help:

• Remember that goals can always be revised later. If you start working towards a goal that you defined and find that you really don't want that result, you can always change it.
  
• Sometimes it is hard to think of a goal because we don't know what is possible--think of someone else who has accomplished something with their horse that you admire and would like to accomplish with your own horse.
• Try changing your perspective--think of something that you don't like with your horse. Then take that statement and define it in terms of what it would look and feel like if that problem was resolved.
  

Feel free to post your goals in the comments section. If you have any questions post them there and I will do my best to answer them.