Weekly Goal Setting & Reflection

We survived our first week! Woo Hoo! It has been SO amazing to loop with our students! We dove in headfirst into our year, and we are already setting weekly goals...in week TWO! Wow! Last year, we didn't begin this process until January! It is a tremendous feeling to see how far they have come as reflectors of their own learning!

A Little Background:

During our first week of school, the students set up digital portfolios using a tremendous tool: Weebly for Education (link to our old post on the tool). We gave them a few "Must Do's" for their portfolios (They needed certain tab titles and sub pages), but the rest...they could completely personalize! Some students really went above and beyond!

Some examples of student portfolios

This week, we taught them how to write their weekly goals as a blog post. This was a shift for them from last year when we used a Google Document with a table format. Today, we had a mini-lesson and discussion about how we could incorporate the various parts from last year's goal setting into this new style. We were SO impressed with all that they remembered from last year! 

The "Must Do's" for goal setting?

• Goals for each subject area
• The "other" category is optional (or required for some...) that focuses on behaviors/organization
• They must have a clear goal that has a "why" as part of it
• Each goal must have 3 action steps...things they will actually do to meet this goal...this is the harder part...we are working on making them "measurable" (wow...sound familiar?? I just did this as part of my building leadership academy!!) 3 might be a stretch for the 2nd week of school...I'll be happy with 2 great ones right now!
• A reflection must be completed at the end of each week for each goal. Things they could share: progress on action steps, differences they noticed, what went well, what was hard, next steps, etc.

The results? Amazing, thoughtful goals! Granted, many have a little ways to go...but for the second week of school...we couldn't have been more proud! We continually remind ourselves that our kiddos are only 10 and 11 years old--there are ADULTS that can't even do this! :)

How do you set and monitor goals with your students? Feel free to sound off on the comments below! We'd love to hear from you!

~Angela