2. A good inquiry teacher asks her students to provide their
perspective on their progress, so I pose the following questions
How do you think you are doing? How do you know? What do you need
to do next? Student response: Miss Band, How am I doing and what am
I doing next?
3. Goal setting time! The laborious time of the year when
students have lost the motivation to consider another chore that is
expected of them as I scramble to help them come up with a
statement that fits the criteria of being a SMART goal.
4. Then, its full steams ahead, climbing the mountain, crossing
the river, hitting the targets Until we get too caught up in day to
day classroom life and I no longer have students even consider how
they are working towards their goals.
5. Like most aspects of what we teach, there is no single
approach to goal setting. I understand the value of it and needed a
system that would be sustainable for the entire year. Mountains,
rivers and target boards werent for me.
6. I simply needed students to be able to answer the following
three questions: How do you think you are doing? How do you know?
What do you need to do next?
7. First I became familiar with the continuumthe one we no
longer use Continuums were pasted in the student workbooks and
students were made familiar with the continuums.
8. I created outcomes lists from the continuum...the new
continuums do this for us.
9. From each set of outcomes I created a pretest.
10. Students then used the pretest to check the skills that
they are independent at. Next they highlighted their continuum to
show where they were at on the continuum.
11. Now they knew where they were at and could choose a center
focusing on their next outcome goal.
12. When a student had mastered the next outcome on the list,
they were required to complete an I can reflection sheet to show
their understanding of the outcome before moving on to the next
one.
13. The benefits: This enables students to break Math down into
manageable, focused goals, enabling them to work more productively.
Students take responsibility for their learning and are able to
recognize their progress towards goals.
14. The students feel as though they have a sense of control
and choice over the learning, while I can easily differentiate for
each learner, as each center focuses on a different outcome. I am
able to use the outcomes lists to give constructive and targeted
feedback. Goals are generally short term and change as students
work towards them.
15. How do you think you are doing? How do you think you are
doing in Math?
16. How do you know how you are doing?
17. How do you know? How do you know?
18. What do you need to work on next?
19. My students now know how they are doing and what they need
to do next. But most importantly. They know what they dont
know!
