So how have I refined the project idea? Last year I spent most of my time on goal setting and improving the quality of the goals using the SMART model. This proved to be effective. I was having students set a goal each Monday, then reflect upon it Friday. Then students had the chance to set a new goal the following Monday. While some kept the same goal, they were in the minority. The majority just moved on and set a new one. I now realize with conversation with the students and Life that I need to try something different. Extend the amount of time that students have to work on one goal. Give them the chance to reflect, confer with them each week, have them document, but continue to use that same goal the following weeks to truly have documentation of growth over time. Then have a culminating task for them to post and summarize their thinking over that longer period of time. What difference does that make in students' ability to think critically about their learning and evaluate their progress? I see this working well within the structure of my multi age class because half of my class will be comfortable with goal setting after the work last year
Strengths this week so far for me have been colleagueship and taking risks to do work/play that pushes comfort level. If teachers do not do this, then how can we ask children to? Taking chances to ask others to come talk about blogs and for help refining my goal ideas, discussing social media tools, and talking to students candidly were areas of professional work this week. Playing music and connecting socially have been examples of personal risk taking. All of this matters as I will be expecting my own students to take risks with their learning and facing fears - we as educators need to do this!
A question I have as I continue to refine my thinking is about student goal setting. Can I guide them towards specific areas of learning? Does that defeat the purpose of student directed learning? Can they still create their own learning goals within a particular content area? Perhaps it's one content area at a time?
My updated Learning Plan:
Excellent reflection of your progress and growth!
ReplyDeleteIn terms of modules, I will be offering a facilitated session for "Designing PLPs" at 9:45 tomorrow. It would also be great for you to hear from students at the PLP redesign project at 4:00.
For your question about the amount that you can point students in a direction, you certainly can bound their goals in a way that makes sense for your classroom. One possibility is to use some version of the Transferable Skills (using kid-friendly language, which I can email you a version of) - these are nicely overarching and will apply to whatever rich learning opportunities are present in your classroom.
Even if you allow students to set goals in a more open way, since you are going to be sticking with one goal for longer, this may justify an investment of time from you where you are doing consultations with them to help refine their goals. This will lead to SMARTer goals and also give you the opportunity to nudge them in fruitful directions.
Thanks Life for the response. I see that there can be a middle ground with goal setting. Give them some boundaries in regards to the curriculum we are currently covering but let it be open enough so it stays personal.
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