Goal Setting

After spending time getting to know my students and completing my pre-assessments for the district, (STAR and I did an on demand writing piece) my students are working on reading and writing goals. We are talking about what strategic readers do as they read and what good writing looks like, sounds like and how it makes the reader feel.  We talk about how not only do we need to have goal, but a plan to put it into place.  My district uses Quality Tools and one of my favorite tools for goal setting is the Plan-Do-Study-Act. 

For reading we begin with  a chart entitled "What Strategic Readers Do" and go from there. Then I have each child work through their strengths and weaknesses as a reader. Next, they write their own goal with a plan of action. We review it together during our reading conference. I will go back to this as we continue to meet throughout the nine weeks. (Keep in mind I am also writing my own reading goal with them. So they see me work through the process also)

In Writing, we brainstorm what 5th grade writing sounds like, looks like and how it makes a reader feel as they read it. Then we make a class goal for writing for us to accomplish by the end of 5th grade.  After I've modeled with the class goal,  they write their own goal.  This tool is great to use because it keeps the students focused on one area to grow, much like our writing conferences.  My writing conference begin with Let's take a look at your goal and what are you working on as a writer to accomplish it. 

We revisit the goals during writing conferences and at the end of each published/graded writing piece. With reading we revisit during reading conferences and after we take the STAR assessment.

pdsa

Goals In Writing

This week my students celebrated their first essays and then we spent time reflecting (thank you Stacey!) the work that was published. Next, my students completed a writing quadrant adapted from Ralph Fletcher's book The Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide. It was fantastic. Students were able to then come up with a class goal and then derived their personal goal from the class goal. This was teacher facilitated, but their ideas.

Class Goal:

Plan: By March 2009 we hope to master pushing our thinking forward, write using great detail in our mini-stories, using transitions, write interesting introductions, and good conclusions in our essays.

Study: Read rich literature, write many different essays, revise, get feedback from writing partner and teacher

Do: Reread/revise essays, study other peer's essays, work daily with writing partner, confer effectively with our teacher

Act: (we will reexamine where we are on March 1, 2009) Did I accomplish my goal? If yes, rewrite a goal for the rest of the year. If no, what occurred that kept you from accomplishing your goal? Rewrite Study and Do and attempt again. :-)

This form really keeps the students focused on the goal at hand. Writing the PDSA was easy because of the quadrant. If you would like a copy of the PDSA or Writing Quadrant, please leave a comment with your email address and I will send it to you.

After the class writes the class goal, each student picks one of the areas from the class goal to own and to focus on. I have seen tremendous improvement with their udnerstanding of where they need to improve since trying the PDSA two years ago.