It is now 2018 and like many others we are setting goals! Setting goals and reflecting on them is my goal and I am sharing this with my students. We are starting each week with goal setting and ending it with reflecting on those goals. I see the need to have my students take responsibility for their learning and with that they need to learn how to look at their data, reflect on it, and make goals based on what they are learning about themselves!
My students are not natural reflectors or goal setters, many do not know what reflection means. I found this out quickly when I came back to school after the Christmas break all fired up to set new goals and make them happen. They were excited to look at their SPP’s (Student Proficiency Profiles) and talk with me about their goals for reading, math, writing and behavior. Boy did they set high goals that first week! They learned that they were not setting goals that were achievable and setting steps to accomplish them. I showed them how to use tools such as Google Keep to make a checklist that can be shared and modeled how I use it. We began revisiting our goals every Wednesday and sharing with a partner how we were doing in order to make us more accountable. We also made a bulletin board with mini clipboards for each of us to post our goals and make them visible to all!
