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Goal setting has become a big part of many areas of our academics and work habits. Here are some examples:
We are working in math on building up fact fluency to meet our goal of 30 facts 0-20 in 2 minutes. Beginning of the year “2nd grade goals” thinking about what Reading, Writing, or Math areas took more time and effort in 1st grade or we feel less confident about and we think we could focus in on
Beginning Class goals of building up reading stamina time
Fall Table goals based the main ideas of the reading unit - made visible for discussing and accountability
Mid Year we switch to individual goals based on Fluency, Decoding or Comprehension needs. We’ll help our reading partners assess how they are meeting these goal.
We track this so children know what kinds of facts to spend their practice time on and can see their progress. We’re also working on thinking “How can I meet this goal?” For facts they need to decide how and how long they will practice. For reading they might need to move away from distracting friends or choose different books. We track stamina goals with a guinea pig board game and we color a square every time we read for more uninterrupted minutes.
Self-evaluation is important to us. It begins on our math unit Stoplight assessments where students color-code (red, green or yellow) based on how confident they feel about each problem. We have rubrics in writing (I’m doing it! I’m starting to do it. And Not Yet) for each unit that will help us find our areas to work on. For a quick assessment we do a lot of thumbs up if they did it and thumbs to the side if they should remember to do it next time.
We reward meeting goals with Brag Tags (non-virtual years) and praise and then we set new goals.
Class Reading Stamina Chart 2017
Big Year Goals are made in September and adjusted in January as New Year's goals
Growth Mindset
Growth Mindset
Many kids in schools these days are afraid of failing, want the right answer, and compare themselves to each other instead of trying to be better today than yesterday. This causes kids to not try, give up, copy a neighbor they think is right, or avoid creative thinking in favor of what they deem “correct”. They get stuck thinking “I’ll never be good at math” or avoid using bigger words they can’t spell correctly, which lowers their writing scores. Having a Growth Mindset can help that! We will be changing our classroom vocabulary to match this new positive thinking that we can always improve with effort and help. We’re reading great books that teach us that effort and growth are important. Here’s our vocabulary chart if you want to try it at home.
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