6th Grade Language Arts Postcard Project About Risk Taking and Success

Above is the postcard I made for my class I am currently teaching. I am working with some 6th grade language arts students for about 5 weeks. The theme of my unit is "What Makes People Take Risks?" We are examining the traits needed to take risks and how that allows us to be successful in life.

We just started our unit and the first project was to create a postcard that contained a quote along with imagery to support the quote. The quote had to pertain to both risk taking and being successful in life. I will share the artwork of my students soon, but I wanted to share mine.

The other requirement was to write two paragraphs justifying the work done.

Here it goes

The quote I chose was "You're better than you think you are.....you can do more than you think you can." - Rick Fountain

Rick Fountain embodies this quote perfectly. Rick and John Byrne both just completed a 100 mile race in the mountains to claim a monster achievement in running Leadville. This quote hits both aspects of risk taking and success. Prior to this training, Rick mentioned in an email that his longest run ever was 11 miles. These two guys are leading examples of risking taking. It is a huge risk to commit to a rigorous training schedule to be able to run 100 miles and in the mountains at that. The time dedicated to being on your feet and sacrificing time away from family, friends, social events, etc. is tough. To top it off it is a long journey.

However, the risk is worth the reward. Success has probably never been sweeter for these two guys. They lead by example. They touched the lives of many of us as we joined them for training runs, read their blogs and emails, and just took note of what they were doing. I know personally I spent time listening carefully and studying what they had to say. They will claim to not being experts, but their experience through it all makes them close. Success was achieved by their dedication to their goal. An amazing journey where they had to dig down to places in their soul, heart, and mind to keep going. Places many of us will never come close to reaching. They are perfect examples of setting about a goal for success and knowing the only way to get there is the risk of training and running. AWESOME!