I was asked to create goals for the thrid quarter. Setting goals for students has always been tricky for me. Is that too easy? Will that be impossible? How will I measure this? What if we don't meet this? But, I've gotten better. I think they key is to set the bar high. Students perform up to your expectations. Here are mine.
Math and Reading Goals
My goal for reading and math is that each student will have achieved 1 year’s worth of learning gains by the end of the 3rd quarter as measured by STAR and/or Galileo testing. According to the latest results from both of these tests this will be challenging with some individuals, but is definitely within reach.
Meeting the Goal in Reading
I have reorganized my reading groups for this week. I am excited because students who have shown a lot of improvement will be able to receive more appropriate challenges. I will work with the lowest 11 students in my class daily. We will work on vocabulary and site word recognition for a majority of that time. All groups will have book club style conversations before, during, and after reading. We will record these conversations – podcast style. We will continue to read a healthy mix of fiction and nonfiction. I am changing our word wall this week to make it more student friendly. Words we know will be sorted by parts of speech up on our west wall. The bulletin board will be a place for children to add unknown words that they come across in their reading (and a brief definition) for which they need to determine the meaning. I’m excited because I’m organized.
Meeting the Goal in Math
Again, groups have been reorganized. This makes it easy for me to pull groups from centers and target specific skills. However, I have decided to back off of centers a little bit. The bottom line is that for all students to make the growth I want to see, they need to be proficient in all operations. Right now, we’re not there. So, this week we will do many whole group, small group, and partner activities. I have extensions designed to challenge higher students who will likely finish some of the practice activities more quickly. I have time built in to the schedule to pull the lower groups. Once more activities are taught, and students become more confident in solving situations, then it may be appropriate to utilize more centers for practice. But, I feel there is a lot of teaching that needs to happen at this point.
Character/Leadership Goals
My goal is that students will utilize their talents to fulfill functions necessary to our classroom. Their leadership will be evident when they are able to complete these tasks independently of my help.
Meeting this Goal
Every student has applied for a classroom job. After conducting interviews for some positions, all students have been hired. All students, with the help of our real estate agent, have found a neighborhood, or table, where they can afford to live. Students who are not performing their role adequately – or make poor character choices – may lose their job, and will need to find a way to pay to stay in their house, or else sit on the floor. But, I don’t see that as a likely scenario. I am hoping that their need to be a productive citizen helps them make good choices, and that their talents will enable them to be creative, innovative, and successful in their employment.
February is coming up. The said neighborhoods are all named for areas around Washington DC. As we look closely at certain historic heroes - famous women, presidents, African Americans, and Chicano Americans - our projects will be exhibits for the nearby Smithsonian. Bonus.
It is beautiful when what you want to do, what is in the curriculum, and the strategies you are using to meet your goals all overlap.
