Goal Setting in the Classroom Freebie

Just a quick post today to offer up a freebie based on one of my most popular posts from a little ways back...

During the 2013-2014 school-year I was fortunate enough to be a cooperating teacher for a student in a local university's certification and masters program. Because she was obtaining her masters at the same time she was getting certified to be a teacher, I had her with me in the classroom for pretty much the whole year.

I feel like this was such a gift for everyone involved. For her, she got more "hands-on" time than most student teachers do and was really able to grow and be confident because she was with the same students for a longer period of time. I was blessed with someone who I worked really well with, which really helped take a load off of me as far as teaching stress goes. And ultimately, the students benefited because they had two teachers with similar styles. Win-win-win!

As part of her experience, she had to do a case-study of sorts. She chose to do goal setting in the classroom for this. I cannot say enough what a huge impact it made on student performance and self-worth.

Each week, we helped students choose a goal to work on. At the beginning of the project, they needed a lot of guidance, but towards the end, they were choosing spot-on goals all by themselves.  A few goals students chose were:

-using capitals and ending marks
-completing morning work
-completing homework
-raising their hand in class more frequently
-raising their hand to be called on {as opposed to calling out}
-playing with different friends at recess {this applied perfectly to a student who wanted only to play with her friend who expressed interest in playing with other students}

There were many more, but those are a few I can remember at the moment.

Students chose their goals, worked on them during the week, and at the end of the week, they conferred with myself or my student teacher and we decided if they achieved their goal. Again, at first, everyone said they did {some were less concrete than others}, but over time students became more reflective and answered honestly.

Students who achieved their goals were given a certificate and also permitted to join in during Minute to Win It at the end of the week. We rarely had a student who didn't accomplish that week's goal.

Since that post, I've had a few readers of my blog request the goal-setting sheets and certificates. I made a few and have made them a freebie to encourage goal setting on your classroom, no matter the grade you teach.

Click here to grab the freebie.

You can also read more about how my student teacher did our goal setting program by clicking here.

I hope you will try goal setting in your classroom this year! If you do, how do you execute your goal setting program?

Halle