Teacher Week 13: Teacher Tips and Tricks

Hmmm….Where to begin? There are so many great tips that I could give so I decided to focus on individual goal setting with students.

In our district we are really pushing for students to be setting their own learning goals in reading writing and math. This was a big adjustment for me this year. I was worried that my little ones couldn’t handle this new responsibility, I mean come on they are only 5 right??
Would they really choose an appropriate goal?
would their goals be too easy?
Too hard?
Would they know when it was time for a new goal?

Well let me tell you that I was amazed at their progress and attribute a lot of that to individual self selected goals. I feel like I did the best with this in reading last year. Here’s how it looked in my room:

Using the CAFE board was a huge life saver when it came to goal setting. I could point to the board and after listening to a child read/taking a running record I would help the student reflect on their current goal or set a new goal when they were ready. Students could then fill in their individual goal sheet independently because they simply had to copy the strategy from the card into an “I Can” statement. The next time I met with the student we would discuss a learning plan and how we would know when they met this goal. All of this hard work paid off and I only had 2 students not reading at grade level at the end of the year. (both of which were HUGE attendance concerns, I’m talking 40-50+ missed days of school, GEEZ) Many of my students were reading a whole grade level ahead and the vocabulary you’d hear them using about their own reading was amazing (and pretty adorable too).

So my goal for this year? I need to do a better job of goal setting and conferring in writing. Because the CAFE worked so well, I worked on a VOICES (for the six trait: Voice, Organization, Ideas, Conventions, Exciting Word Choice, Sentences Fluency) writing board. I’m hoping that this will be just what I need to get my students to be the amazing writers I know they can be. Check it out here!

Thanks for following along with me this week if you missed any of my other posts click here.
Meet the Teacher
Classroom Tour
Organizing for Instruction
Classroom Management
Or to catch up with some other teachers, start here!

~Jess