Goals are so important
I feel like I am always setting goals for myself.
I think teachers do this all the time.
What am I working on?
What are my goals for school today?
How can I teach better?
How did that lesson go?
What should I do to reach the struggling student?
How can I reach the student child who seems to know everything?
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I always want my students to think about creating goals for themselves, and I know this is a difficult task especially in kindergarten. I will be talking about writing goals, and someone will shout out something that has nothing to do with reading or even math.
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Each year I ask myself what can I do to bring kindergartners one step closer to making appropriate goals.
To make goal setting easier for kindergarteners, I decided to make sheets that they could just circle the goal they think they are working on.
There is a spot at the bottom for me to write what I think they are working on too. I hope to change these goal sheets as the year goes on.
Last year I shared with you Writing Goals board above. I created another sheet to use for the fall below. These are the writing goals we are working on right now.
This summer I read this book How to Assess While You Teach Math by Dana Islas. I LOVED this book. Dana shared some great math lessons and shared how she gets her students involved in the assessment process. I loved how she had her students make math goal. Dana also sends home the goal sheet so parents can see what their child's goal is in school.
This book encouraged me to have students set math goals! I strongly recommend this book. It also comes with a video of some of the lessons.
Here are the math goals we are working on. If you look on the sheet above Solving Problems could also be word problems.
Reading Goals
I do use the CAFE board when doing Daily 5.
Eventually, the kids put their name on a Post-it and stick it under the category they are working on during the reading time. I decided to make a sheet that had specific goals for reading time.
I think this is a good way of making explicit what readers are working on, and it's something they can put in their portfolios for self- reflection.
