Students continued working on their narrative pieces. I gave them a quick reminder to make sure they were focusing on their goals as well but wanted to see what they could do independently without too much assistance. Some students took out their SMART Goal setting sheets and actually put them on the table next to them while others got right to work and quickly seemed to forget they even had goals. The next day, I repeated the same process. After the mini-lesson, I asked students to remember their goal and their action plan.
As students went off to work, again I noticed a variety of self-monitoring strategies happening around the class. Some students got out timers and started to time themselves, others marked down how often they were getting distracted. One student even started to make a plan not only when he was working on his writing but anytime he’s independently working. He has begun to create a to-do list for that day or that class period and then checks things off as he completes them. On the other end of the spectrum, some students seemed to have completely forgotten their goals and these are definitely the students I need to check in with! They are showing me that their self-monitoring strategies do not exist at this time. I stopped the students part way through the period and talked to the students about their motivation. After reading Christopher A. Wolters's article: "Regulation of Motivation: Evaluating an Underemphasized Aspect of Self-Regulated Learning" I modelled how to self-praise positive behaviour. I modelled giving myself positive feedback as I was working. We discussed stopping and telling ourselves "Great progress so far, I just wrote for 10 minutes without any distractions," or "Wow! I just added in 5 sentences today. I am on a roll." The students thought this was funny of course and acted a bit silly while doing it but I need to model how to do these types of behvaiours out loud if I'm expecting that they begin to do them independently! At the end of this second tracking period, I asked students to write a goal reflection in their writing journal with how they think they did that day with their goal. The responses varied widely. Some students were quite honest while others had already accomplished their goal (and this is a whole other post topic).
0 Comments
Last week, we finally sat down and set goals. Students were given a SMART goal planner which I found on Pinterest and they used this to write down their goal and action plan.
I found that I had quite a variety of understanding even though we had spent a TON of time already on goal setting. If you haven't read my previous posts, we talked about goal setting as a class, we watched movies about goal setting, I modelled how to goal set, students chose three goals, discussed their goals with partners and then actually narrowed it down to one goal. Some students set proximal goals which had great action plans while others needed to conference with me multiple times before they were able to create a specific and proximal goal. I found that most students chose a writing behavioural goal as opposed to a content specific one. Reflecting back, I'm wondering if the behavioural goals are going to be more authentic as they can be transferred into any genre of writing. I'll have to wait and see which goals are actually easier to accomplish. So, now that we've set the goals, it's time to begin self-monitoring. This is part I am most nervous about as it's the area that I need the most help with in my own life. My plan is to give students time during each writing workshop to stop and self-monitor. Also, after every couple of lessons, we will take time to self-reflect on our goals. I'm not expecting students to be self-monitoring or self-reflecting on their own yet but I am expecting that they are able to do it with my assistance. Stay tuned!
I started goal setting on Wednesday. It was really busy week in 4B as we were off on Monday for Thanksgiving and then away at the zoo on Thursday as part of our habitat unit. I gathered the students on the carpet and tried to sound really excited. I find that if I build up whatever we are doing to make it sound like the most exciting thing in the world, then I can usually get more buy-in from students. Now, I need to be completely honest here. I had previously discussed goal setting with students during the first few weeks of school and had already discussed with them that we would be setting goals. But, what I missed was the important step of actually discussing what goals are! So, I launched with a Kid President video. If you don't already know who Kid President is, I strongly recommend that you visit his Youtube channel! The video was all about dreams and achieving them and it was a great pep talk for the students. I attached the video to the bottom of this post so that you can watch it. Next up, I asked the students "What are goals?" and I got responses such as: " Goals are things that aren't easy, you need to work for them" "Goals are things that you want to do or get or achieve" "Goals are in soccer. You get a goal when you score on the net." "Goals take work." The students seemed to have a pretty good understanding of what goals were but when I asked them how they achieve their goals, most were quite general and said "You work toward it." When I asked, "How?" there was radio silence in the classroom. You could have heard crickets sing. So, I introduced SMART goal setting. I showed them a presentation on the smart board that I found at the the SMART Exchange (different SMART- this one is the name of a brand of smart boards that you use in the classroom). You can find the presentation here: http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=86f8ab91-e4be-453b-91b1-34e8ddf9c548 It was quick, to the point and the students seemed to have a better understanding of how we actually set and achieve goals. We discussed each stage and I gave examples and asked for examples from the students. On Monday, we'll review this concept, and I am going to model how I would set my own writing goals. Stay tuned!
Here are some resources which I've found online that I am going to use to help me with this journey. I will revise this post as I continue to find resources and spend more time reading each carefully. 1. Self-Assessment Inspires Learning http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/03/31/heres-a-goal-tracking-sheet-im-giving-to-students/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110815143935.htm http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/05/18/my-best-posts-on-students-setting-goals/
|
GOAL:Students will set 1 writing goal for the duration of the narrative writing unit. I will teach them strategies to self-monitor during their writing periods, and will teach them to reflect upon their goals. ArchivesCategories |