Rethinking Student Goal Setting

Photo Credit

Kate and I have been doing a lot of reflecting about how how we have done student goal setting up to this point in our Personalized Learning Journey. It was great for a while...it helped us start...it helped our previous students gain some metacognition skills...BUT...it felt like we could do it better. It felt like something was missing. We wanted to push ourselves more, as well as our students. In all honesty, it sometimes felt like "busy work", rather than pushing our personalization further.

Up to this point, we had always required WEEKLY goal setting with our students. They need to write quality goals using action steps, as well as reflection for each and every subject area. We set new goals on Mondays, and our students wrote reflections on how they did that week by Sunday night. We would check their goals. Give them feedback. It was part of our Digital Portfolios. It was...a lot. Not only for us, but also for them.

Kids, by nature, have difficulty setting goals. It isn't something they walk into our classroom automatically knowing how to do. We did A LOT of modeling and coaching. The problem often ended up that our students did not meet their goals by the end of the week. We talked about carrying over goals to the following week, and that could be noted in their reflections, but some goals took weeks to work on. This is normal. This is still okay. But, nonetheless, hard for 9 and 10 year olds to wrap their heads around. For many of our kids, it became "one more thing" that they "had to do," not the meaningful metacognition we were hoping for.

In our reflection, Kate and I were looking for how we could do this differently. How could we make it more developmentally appropriate and meaningful for our kiddos. We started exploring the option of Unit Goal Setting. 

We pre-assess for everything we teach. This helps us set up different pathway with our kids. It helps us know what they know, what they don't know, see gaps, and more. But the pre-test was really a "teacher tool." It was meaningful "Assessment For Learning"--but primarily for us. We have been discussing assessment a lot over the last few months. How can we get kids more involved. How can we help them "drive the bus" of their learning. It was then that we had one of those "a-ha" (or possibly "duh!") moments. Why do we only see those results? Why have we never put those pretests back in the hands of the kids? Ultimately, this conversation really forced us to re-evaluate our practices.

So, this year, we will be tackling UNIT GOAL SETTING with our students. We created new "Personalized Learning Plans" (PLPs) that we will be supporting students with. 

Our plan: Each unit we will still pre-assess and score the results. We will then put the pretests back in the hands of the kids and help them set UNIT goals with action steps on what they will do to meet their goals. This will help them work with us to set personal pathways for their unit of learning. For a large chunk of our kiddos (your typical 80%), their goals might be similar. They need grade level materials/instruction. They need the largest group mini-lessons. They might work through things in different orders, but there will be large chunks of them that have similar needs. The last 20% will need gaps filled or challenges to go deeper and beyond. We are eager to see how these conversations go and how the pathways play out. Students will then complete a reflection on their work at the end of each unit. When we confer with kids each day, this will become a touchstone in our conversations. We have decided that we will do this in Math, Reading, and Writing this year.

Click me to see full tool. You can "FILE, MAKE A COPY" of it, to tweak and make your own!

This PLP is also in the same Google Sheet as the reading one!

Click me to see full tool. You can "FILE, MAKE A COPY" of it, to tweak and make your own!

Each of the images above link to the Google Sheets that we made. You are welcome to "FILE, MAKE A COPY" of these documents and make them your own. The Reading and Writing PLPs are part of what we are calling our "Digital Literacy Binder" this year (a twist on our Digital Reading Binders from years past). This updated digital "binder" will also house their book log, journal, and personal literacy data. 

We are confident that we will make tweaks as the year goes on. We need to see how they do and what they think their needs are. We want their input in improving the tools. These tools will also be significant links within their digital portfolios this year.

We'll keep you posted! How are you goal setting with your students? What have you found to be the most successful? Would love to learn with you!

Happy Teaching!

~Angela

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

Digital Portfolios!

Our students' digital portfolios are a place for them to house artifacts that they feel showcase some of their best work. Last year our students started their portfolios using Google Sites.  We created a template for them to use and they did their best to make it their own. The students introduced themselves with an All About Me page and updated their data page throughout the year. Every few weeks we would have a portfolio "dump" and new artifacts would be added.

We heard about Weebly at the Convening Conference put on by the Institute @ CESA 1 last November. Angela and I were pretty established with our classroom website and the students' portfolios, so we didn't think too much about it until this past summer. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been blogging for years, but Google Sites does not come easily to me. I find it difficult to navigate and adding to our website was always cumbersome to me. We felt the same frustration from the kids. Because of that, we were looking for a new platform and remembered that someone had mentioned Weebly.

After playing around with it for 30 minutes I knew that it would not only be a better option for us, but also for our students. There are tons of themes/templates to get you started, and the drag and drop interface makes it very easy for adults and kids to use. If you visit the Weebly for Education site you'll see you can manage multiple student sites from one account and their are a variety of easy to use features. As the teacher, you control what is posted and you can be certain that your students' sites are kept private. I also love that you can easily add text, images, slideshows, audio, links, documents and more!

Since we are looping with our students, and our parents are familiar with our classroom website, Angela and I will be continuing to use Google Sites this year. Next year we will move our website to Weebly. Our students, however, will be recreating their digital portfolios this year using Weebly. Here is a sneak peek at an example of a student portfolio. The students will have the opportunity to make it their own, but they will be expected to include the given tabs across the top. Check back throughout the year for updates on their portfolios. I will be sure to post a few student examples once they're up and running. It'll be a great back-to-school activity within the first few weeks!

~ Kate