Increase achievement by involving your students in self-assessment, goal setting, and goal tracking!

At a recent staff meeting, our principal moved every teacher into a team of two and asked each person to write a personal goal that we would like to accomplish this year.  Our goal sheet included spaces for not only the goal, but also the steps that one would take to accomplish this goal and how specific people could help us. At future staff meetings, we will check in with our partner to share our progress towards meeting this goal.  Also, he challenged us to think of ways to track our progress towards completion.  The principal introduced this activity by saying that he wanted to model for us how we might include our students in goal setting.

 This activity was very timely.  Most teachers in our school are close to finishing their initial assessments of students.  For me, assessments are finished and my Reading Intervention classes are beginning.  Last year, my Reading Intervention team experienced great sucess in improving our students' reading due in part to implementing the specific Assessment for Learning practices of student self assessment and goal setting.  (This student involvement piece of Assessment for Learning is so often forgotten.)  Using the results of informal reading inventories shared with students, goals were chosen by students and communicated to parents and classroom teachers on goal sheets along with the steps to completing the goal.  Goal cards were created and posted on desks or in folders to remind students of his/her goal. Progress was tracked on generic graphs that were personalized for each student.

 
Listed below are the resources I have posted to help you implement the often forgotten student piece of Assessment for Learning.

Goal Setting and Tracking
Click here to see goal setting sheets, goal cards for posting on student desk, and goal tracking charts that you can personalize for the needs of your students. 

Thank you to Sarah Valter for sharing her goal card for the desk.  If you have resources that have worked well in your classroom for goal setting or tracking, please share them. I will post them in the next e-newsletter.

To  prepare your students for goal setting, read aloud Salt in His Shoes by Michael Jordan.

To read more about involving students in assessment for learning, google "assessment for learning stiggins."  Look for the article titled "Classroom Assessment for Learning" in the September 2002 edition of Educational Leadership by Chappuis and Stiggins.

To extent your learning, attend Sarah Valter's session on this topic at the MO Early Learning Conference on November 3-4 at Tan Tar A. Learn more about her session and other speakers at http://muconf.missouri.edu/moearlylearning.  Register for the conference at http://muconf.missouri.edu/moearlylearning/Registration.html.