Using Bulletin Boards for Goal Setting

Hi friends. I’m linking up with Angie and Ashley this month to bring you ideas for your Bulletin Boards.  Now I know there are so many adorable boards out there for displaying student work, but I wanted to bring you something a little different.  I like my bulletin boards to be functional {and cute too} so today I want to talk about how I use my bulletin boards for student goal setting.  

I know many people use and LOVE the CAFE for reading which started me off on this bulletin board goal setting journey.  I used CAFE for 2 years and kept thinking there had to be something out there that was similar for writing and math, but just couldn’t find anything I loved.  So I decided to create my own VOICES menu for writing and COUNT menu for math. Here is a quick peek at what the wall where I display these goals looks like at the beginning of the year. (Excuse the disaster, this was taken as I was frantically trying to get everything done for back to school night because that door was being put in over the summer and was finished just a few hours before parents arrived!)

So if you are familiar with the CAFE menu, you know that there are cards that have goals on them that students will choose from (with teacher guidance.) I created a menu and goal cards for math which I call “COUNT.”  The letters stand for:

Counting and Cardinality
Operations and Algebraic Thinking
Understanding Geometry
Numbers and Operations in Base ten/Fractions
Thinking about Measurement and Data

Underneath each header are goal cards based on the Common Core Standards for K-3. Student names are displayed on post its next to their goal and can easily be changed as students meet and change their goal.  (To see how I have students set their own goals in kindergarten, check out my post here)

 I also created a menu for writing called “VOICES” I have seen several different versions of this type off menu out there but wanted to create my own based on the Lucy Calkins writing rubrics, and the common core standards that we used.  Here is a glimpse of my board during the first week of school.

And again student names are posted next to their current goal using post its.  This makes it easy for me and students to reference .

It is hard to tell from these pictures, but all three boards (CAFE, COUNT, and VOICES are posted behind my small group table so they are easy to see and reference as I am teaching.  I pull small groups of students with the same or similar goals so we always discuss our goal at the beginning of our small group work.

These personalized goals really make learning more meaningful to students because they feel ownership in what they are working towards and it is specific to their needs. Making even the youngest students a part of goal setting has been a powerful tool in accelerating learning and increasing motivation/engagement in my classroom, I hope you find the same to be true for your students! 

If you would like any of these menus you can find them here:

FREE Cafe Menu

Math COUNT Menu

Writing VOICES Menu 

Thanks for checking them out and be sure to see all of the other great ideas linked up here: