Today, we promise a transformative conversation on student goal setting, monitoring, and tracking. With insights from our esteemed colleague, Dr. Natalie Fallert, we will empower you to help your students take ownership of their goals and become accountable for their progress. Drawing from rich resources like the National Council for Social Studies and the Next Generation of Science Standards, we'll share strategies for offering students a range of specific and attainable goals. We'll also explore how to instigate and sustain goal-oriented conversations among students and between teachers and students, opening up avenues for self-reflection and growth.
Strap in as we dive into the second part of our chat where we illuminate how to energize students with attainable goals and the importance of a systematic approach in tracking progress. We will discuss challenges students might face and how to offer support in these situations. You'll discover the potential of simple tools like Google Forms, post-its, and notebooks for tracking goals and how parent-teacher conferences can be leveraged to facilitate students' self-reflection and sharing their progress with parents. This episode is brimming with practical wisdom and actionable strategies - your toolkit for successfully helping students navigate their educational journey. Don't miss out!
Today, we promise a transformative conversation on student goal setting, monitoring, and tracking. With insights from our esteemed colleague, Dr. Natalie Fallert, we will empower you to help your students take ownership of their goals and become accountable for their progress. Drawing from rich resources like the National Council for Social Studies and the Next Generation of Science Standards, we'll share strategies for offering students a range of specific and attainable goals. We'll also explore how to instigate and sustain goal-oriented conversations among students and between teachers and students, opening up avenues for self-reflection and growth.
Strap in as we dive into the second part of our chat where we illuminate how to energize students with attainable goals and the importance of a systematic approach in tracking progress. We will discuss challenges students might face and how to offer support in these situations. You'll discover the potential of simple tools like Google Forms, post-its, and notebooks for tracking goals and how parent-teacher conferences can be leveraged to facilitate students' self-reflection and sharing their progress with parents. This episode is brimming with practical wisdom and actionable strategies - your toolkit for successfully helping students navigate their educational journey. Don't miss out!
Hello, hello, hello. Dr Carrie Hepburn here from Compass PD and I am super excited because I am joined with my really good friend, Dr Natalie Fowlert. Hi, Natalie, Hello how are you? Doing Good. How are you Doing great?
Speaker 2:It's just busy, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like what's going on in your life right now.
Speaker 2:My boys are now in their freshman year of high school and they are. I have identical red-headed twins and now that they're in high school and I was a high school English teacher I'm struggling with balancing being a mom and not a high school English teacher. So that is really hard. And they both recently made the air rifle team. And today we are recording on a Sunday and it kicks off homecoming week for my kids. So it's their first week of participating in homecoming and I have boys and they I like to say that they're mutes, they don't talk to us or share any information, and so we've been like pulling teeth. So this morning at 8.50, they one of them looks at us and says oh, by the way, I have high school. At 9, they're all day for hall decorating and can you take me now? And I was like, don't, both of you have to be there. But so we were scrambling getting them there. And then the fun fires tonight and all these things that were like, can you tell us Like we have to try you?
Speaker 1:So parenting is hard but fun, crazy, so they're like you have a life that's not about us outside of us, so you should be able to pick up and do what I want when I need to. So I remember those days. I remember those days. That's fun Well.
Speaker 1:I take lots of deep breaths lots of deep breaths, lots of deep breaths and the occasional glass of wine yeah, that always seems to work or multiple glasses, or multiple. I know, I know that's funny. So I'm happy because today, natalie, you're going to be sharing information with the teachers. Today's podcast is aiming to help teachers around that October-ish time of the school year. Depending when you started school, you know many people are in there two and a half months, two and a half three-ish months of school, and some of you are just joining us today. Dr Fowler will be building on information from previous episodes that I'll have linked in the show notes Episodes 18 and 19, where she talked about planning your routines, and then in episode 24, she talked about setting goals at the beginning of the year. Our goal for our podcast is to help you be proactive rather than reactive. So, as we think about where we are right now, this time of the school year, what are some things in October teachers should be having on their radars?
Speaker 2:Last time that I was here, I talked about student goal setting and monitoring, and I hope that everybody has done this, which is a great first step, but we cannot let it stop just at creating those goals. We need to ask ourselves like how are we monitoring or even checking in with our kids on those goals? Today, I want to share some quick and easy tips for how to start and sustain these conversations with students like with you and your students, but then also between students, so that you're not bearing all of that work that they're carrying that load as well. First, I would like to kind of go back and revisit goal setting just a little bit, because if you have not had your students set goals, it isn't too late. So don't think that it's too late. In fact, it might be a perfect time to set them, because you've been getting to know them. You've probably done some benchmark test of some sort or some pre-assessments, and they are now understanding what the expectations of the classroom are. So if you haven't set them yet, that's fine. It's never too late to do this. If you're unsure of where to begin, I'm going to give you a few quick things that should be easy and accessible things for students to set goals around that are very specific, and you might want to look at content-specific goals that you have for your students and offer them a list to choose from. So instead of just saying, pick a goal, any goal, you might have five or six you've already kind of predetermined. So if you're a content area teacher, it might be like if I was an English teacher. It might look something like students self-select and read text or books in an outside of the classroom. Or I want my students to take more ownership in writing, choosing topics and appropriate approaches for a specific purpose and audience.
Speaker 2:If you are a science teacher, it might be something like students can use an inappropriate science to explain the world around them or investigate and generate scientific theories and evidence. Your social studies teacher might say something like students can make informed and reasoned decisions Students are aware of insensitive to cultural diversity. If you're an elementary teacher, it might be a little bit more behavior monitoring or it might be just specific on one particular content or class and these could be ones that you offer your kids and then say choose one of these, which one of these do you want to work for? I would also consider visiting sites like National Council for Social Studies or the next generation of science standards. I know that in the science one, if you go to like read the standards and then you go to practice, there's like little boxes practice.
Speaker 2:There are general things that are like. You know, my kids are good at asking scientific questions. There are these general broad statements that just make them good scientists and then they will go into more further details. If you wanted to be more specific but you could even just pick some of those broad ones National Council of Teacher of English, national Council of Teacher of Mathematics, any of these sites you might be able to find goals that are overarching that you could say, hey, why don't we choose from one of these and then those? Your kids could then create their goals around those. I like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could also like even just think about your like if that's too much work, you could think about what's my next unit and looking at the big goals of that unit and saying here's what's coming up next.
Speaker 2:Which one of these do you want to work on? Or if, like I know, I'm an English teacher, so if we were doing the argument essay, I might give them the rubric for that essay at the forefront and say which one of these do you want to work on in your writing as we're going through this unit, so it doesn't have to be this crazy creative list for things that kids come up with on their own. You could give them boundaries to their goal setting and help them focus on more specific steps to reach those goals, and we'll also offer you the teacher to then possibly group students based on those goals to discuss ways that they can work forward achieving them, and that allows them to hold each other accountable for their goal setting as well and takes a little bit of that burden off of you. Which is going to lead us into what the main goal of today's podcast is, and that is how do you get kids talking about their goals with each other and how do you talk to students about those goals?
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, one of the things that I was thinking about is, just last week I was in a school district and they were really struggling with like, what kind of goals do I set? And I was working with elementary three through five teachers and we were looking at their rubrics, that their scoring guides, those learning targets, and one of the things we talked about was thinking about a hierarchy of skills that students need to develop and maybe having different goals around those hierarchies. That could be choice goals. How do we take some of this pressure off of us as the teachers trying to control and be in charge of all of these things and help students hold one another accountable? So please share your brilliance with us, dr Fowler.
Speaker 2:And I will say that I do come with that secondary lens and so when I think about goal setting I and tracking and monitoring that, I think about it with that lens of I have 100 to 150 students. How in the world am I supposed to keep track of this? And so it doesn't mean that you cannot do all of the same work, and it's still extremely powerful with elementary kids. If you only have 20 kids on your roster, like it'll work with any of them, our conversations might look a little bit different, but I think that the framework of all of it is still usable for any one of those grade levels fans. But we want to think about, like, how do we get students to talk about their goals with each other and setting up those routines? So it's one thing to report your goals to your teacher or periodically, like look at a piece of paper or checklist and mark them off Bye, but we want them to really own those goals and to have conversations around them. And the more that they do that, the more it kind of comes to the forefront. If you just tuck it in a drawer and ignore it, then you're not going to work towards those goals. I want you to think about the fact that it doesn't have to take a lot of time. A lot of times, people, if you only have 45 minutes in a class or 50 minutes for that subject area, you're like where am I going to pull this time for these kids to do this? But if you make it a regular part of your classroom routines where you might set up something like every Monday we're going to check in, you're going to meet with your partner that is already predetermined. You're going to remind them what your goal is and you're going to tell them, like either what worked last week in reaching that goal and what you're going to try this week to keep that goal going. So literally giving your kids a minute and a half each, so three minutes total of a Monday to check in and make a plan for their goal for that particular week. You could also then have them meet again on Friday for like a minute each to say this is how my goal is going this week or not. It would really just depend on your class, your setup, how your kids are working. Once a week might be plenty, like every Monday they do a check in. They kind of say this is what I did, this is how it worked. This is what is or isn't working.
Speaker 2:When you're thinking about those partners, if you've created those boundaries in your goal setting that say, like here are the six goals you can choose from in my class, then you could do partnerships based on goals. So, like anybody working on goal two, they would be partners. It could just be that they are partners and it doesn't matter what their goal is. Go a couple of different ways and so just how you want to set that up, if I had an English class and I might have writing partners I don't want them to have goal partners and writing partners it would share with their writing partner what their goal is and there might be a time where I pull all the kids in a small group who are working on goal two and have a conversation with them.
Speaker 2:But you can still share with your partner ways that you're working toward your goal. So it doesn't have to take a lot of time and that's something that they could be doing and you could just be walking around the room checking and making sure that that's actually what they are doing. They're having conversations about their goals and it could become a small writing assignment, like on a every other Friday, asking them to reflect Like how have you? You know, how are you doing this. So getting them to do some of that work is really important and figuring out what works in your classroom for that to happen.
Speaker 1:I think that's very manageable. If a teacher does something like, let's say, workshop model, that would be a really nice share and it really highlights for students that you value it.
Speaker 2:Right and we you know I used to be on a school board it's like you put money in the things that you value. Well, you put time and energy in the things that you value, and so if you do not carve out time for your kids to have conversations about their goals, then it's not something that you value or they value, and it just is something that they wrote down and it goes by the wayside. And we know that goal setting and monitoring with students has a huge effect size, according to Hattie. So this is a way that you can do that.
Speaker 1:That's manageable From the elementary lens. I always had that in the students notebook that went home, so parents would see what their goals were and they, the students, were supposed to talk with their parents about that. And then when they came in in the morning I think I've talked about this before that, like I checked all their notebooks for any information from home and to just kind of check in, it gave me a chance to look at the notebook, have a minute with each kid as they were coming in and we were getting ready for our morning day. So there's lots of different ways. What matters most really is the system that works for you the teacher.
Speaker 1:That's the hardest part. What system can I stay consistent with?
Speaker 2:And I think that the I love that you mentioned that the parents know what the goals are as well, because I feel that the more people who know and are asking about it, the more accountability there is and the more it's like oh, you're paying attention to this. Yes, we are paying attention to it, but the goal setting shouldn't be a shaming piece or, if you are not reaching it, it should be like how is it going? What can we do to help you reach this goal? And that's what that partnership is for, and those conversations is not about shaming someone because they're not reaching the goal, but how do we help you reach this goal? Because, again, we want to create a community of learners. And how do we create that community together? Yeah, this then takes me into like, okay, we've got our kids that are monitoring these, but then I, as a teacher, I have to show how important this is and that I'm invested in their goals and that I'm acknowledging their progress along the way, or I'm being empathetic to the fact that they're not progressing and figuring out what this like. How can I help you either set a new goal or achieve this one? And so when I think about, like, if a student is struggling to meet their goal. Maybe they chose the wrong one and you might have to discuss other options, but it is important for them to try, like, let them try and see, and maybe, if you're looking at the goals that you set, there might be some that are lower hanging fruit, and then maybe they picked a really hard, difficult goal and so you might have to have a conversation with them about, you know, this one is this is a really big goal, but what are some things that you need in place before you hit this goal? And so maybe they will see that there are goals that they need to work on that will help them get there and considering, like I like to call it like that lower hanging fruit, especially at the beginning, showing them that I'm going to set a goal and I'm going to progress toward it. Oh, I met that goal, and then they see some value, and then they're like oh, we set a higher goal or go to the next one or whatever.
Speaker 2:But they also may have had an appropriate goal, but the steps that they're taking are not working for them, and so they might have thought this is how I'm going to try to reach this goal, but it's not working. And that's where you, as a teacher, might have to consider offering them two or three different ways to try and then let them choose one of those. You know different ways to reaching their goal. Or consider giving them a chance to talk to another student who's working on that same goal and see what approaches they used and see if some of those might work for them. Or, you know, you may end up pulling like all of the kids who are working on that same goal and letting them kind of share.
Speaker 2:But my word to a lot of caution would be like, don't do all of these. Like, choose which one would work best for your kid, that particular kid, and what approach would work best. Like, do I need to give them a few options and let them choose? Do I need to pair them up with someone to have a conversation? Or am I noticing that a lot of my kids in this group are struggling and I'll pull a small group and help all of them at once? So that's you know, don't do all of them, but choosing which one would maybe work the best.
Speaker 1:I agree. I agree. One of the things that I was thinking as you were talking to was sometimes it's not the right goal. I see that a lot with students who struggle in school and elementary, that they're trying so hard to please us, the teacher, that they want to be like I'm going to read. Well, back in the day they would say like I'm going to read Harry Potter or I'm going to read Percy Jackson and then these giant chapter books and you're like like you don't want to, you don't want to discourage or say no, that's.
Speaker 1:You know that's not a good goal, but one of the things that is nice to do that you've talked about in the past is like setting and you talked about it like setting some smaller goals or shorter goals to get that momentum going. Those are nice dopamine hits so that when they get into a more challenging goal they really do have some momentum going, so that it builds up their confidence, it makes them feel like they can be successful, and it's kind of like when we talk about reading up a topic before they get into those harder things. That's one of the things that we try to do a lot and elementary, to get them ready for some of those big, big goals that they have set.
Speaker 2:I love that you say that, because I think about you wouldn't look at it and say, don't, let's pick a different goal. You could say this one's like not yet, we're still working towards it, so we're going to keep it here. But what do we need in order? Like, okay, you tried reading Percy Jackson, you're struggling, like it was hard. Okay, what if we tried some same genres but smaller books, and let's try to do two or three of those and then come back and try this one again. And so now their goal is to read two of these faster ones, just to get their feet wet, and then come back and try it and then they can say, oh, I did that and they feel that success. And then you might have to put another scaffold in there.
Speaker 2:But I do love that idea of just having those conversations with your kids.
Speaker 2:And I know that from a secondary perspective.
Speaker 2:If you have all these kids and you only have 40 minutes a day with them, it's like how do I talk to all of them?
Speaker 2:If you've got those kids and partnerships having conversations weekly, then you as a teacher, really, if you could just check in on them once a month and so figuring out some type of rotating schedule and that can look whatever you want it to look in your classroom. But that idea of like, if I've checked in at least once a month on my kids to see where they are in their goals, then we're doing okay because they're doing weekly checks and I'm helping direct, but then I'm also checking in, you know, hopefully once a month, and that's smart, very smart, that you know, trying to figure out, like, how do you track that? Like I, literally I can come up with a thousand different ways. You just figure and you might try three or four by before you find the one that works for you. But I've had teachers who, you know, put these on post-it notes, I've had them in a sitting chart, I've had them do Google forms, like lots of different things, of when did I meet with these kids?
Speaker 1:So you have to find the system that works for you. It's like we give them the information and they have to take that tool and make it a tool that's efficient and effective for them in their classroom, because if you aren't monitoring and then the kids don't see that it's a value, it's not worth wasting your time or theirs. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's, you know it becomes busy work and we don't want them doing busy work.
Speaker 1:Okay, just a second. I have to pause this for just a minute. You've got to hear this text message that my colleague and I just received from a curriculum coordinator, Compass PD. We just received our preliminary test scores and the results are exciting. Our failure rate has decreased by 50% and we increased our proficiency scores by 8%. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:So I think this kind of leads us to your second question, which is like what are those predictable problems? And to me it's that how do I keep track of their goals? And what would that look like, especially if you've got 100 plus kiddos on your roster? And I will say that I have done this and I've had other teachers do this, and they'll just create a Google form and it's something simple like what is your goal? And let's say that they've given them boundaries, and so they literally give them a drop down menu and they pick one of those what's your goal and why did you choose this goal? Like, what is it that you're? Why was this goal important to you?
Speaker 2:And then maybe one or two things that the kid plans to do to try to reach that goal, and so they would submit that, and it could be something that, like, every two weeks, you just ask them to resubmit, or and as a teacher, you can easily like, sort and aggregate that by groupings you can then take that spreadsheet and turn it into something where you would track like oh, I met with this kid on the state and this is what they said, or they met their goal. Like you could take that and turn it into a lot of different things. But that is one way for you to monitor, to get, like that first snapshot of where are they. But even then monitoring their progress. It could be through a Google form, because then that could tell you, like who do I need to talk to sooner rather than later on that monthly schedule?
Speaker 2:Also, thought about, like if you had a list and like an anchor chart where you're, like here are the five goals that we have for this class, which one are you working on? If, depending on you know if they're in set seats all the time, it could just put a number like up in their upper right hand corner of their desk that says number two and you know that that's what they're working on. They're working on goal number two and it's visible to them, it's visible to you and when that changes, maybe they scratch it out because they achieved it and they write another number on it. So now you can kind of see like what are they progressing? But you wanna make it as quick and easy for you and for them as possible, because that visibility of it eliminates a lot of digging and looking for and trying to find your notes and all of these different things.
Speaker 1:So yes, I know for me how it worked. I'm old school too, so use and elementary so it's a different beast. In elementary we're used to anecdotal notes, like lots of anecdotal notes, and so post-its work for us really well. And I found that a hundred page notebook and I would have it in section. So I would have like reading, writing, math and every kid got a page on that and I could take notes, put the date, write down the notes with the goal, what I was seeing, and then even make notes when we were in small groups, either in guided reading or strategy groups or guided math groups, and then bring that back and stick that post-it on their page in that particular thing. So it was really easy for me to look at the progression of where a student was going.
Speaker 1:But again, elementary, talking 25 kids in a classroom. But for those three subjects reading, writing, math, which were the areas that we focused on that was a system that worked for me. And then it was nice at parent-teacher conferences or writing out report card comments or whatever. I had all of this anecdotal data here. That was like what I noticed the compliment you could give a student, the teaching that you could give a student, and it made writing out those comments and having those parent-teacher conferences go much easier too.
Speaker 2:So so I think it's fun. You and I are both huge proponents of handwriting and putting the computer away. And the first thing, like the Google form is nice, a good catch-all for your kids, that's nice. But when you're walking around in the room it's just easier to carry a notebook and post-its. You know you can sit down and in 90 seconds bend down next to a kid. Ask a local you work here on. Show me how you're doing this, how's it going? And you could write a really quick note on a post it and walk away and Either then put it, just slap it into a notebook, or you can transcribe it into that Google form. It's up to you like, but I think that it doesn't like. These are for you, they're they're not showcasing anywhere, so you don't have to have this beautiful Formatted thing. It just has to be what works for you and I love that.
Speaker 1:It's like I feel like that's the theme of today, like what works for you? There's not one way that's going to work for everybody, so what will you use?
Speaker 2:Right, but do it like, do it, but do whatever works for you. And you know, I would even say that, especially if you got, if you don't have your limited time, or it would work with anybody, but then pulling into small groups and being like all the kids were done goal to come here. Let me check in with you really fast, see where you are, so you can have one conversation, share out some ideas of how things are going, and then that also gives them a support system and it will allow you to say like, oh, you're not, you know, like work, talk with that kid about how to work on your goal, because there there's only one of you and so if they can help share that, that work, it's important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it, thank you. So, as we think about this time of year with you know we're heading into October. What reminder or tip do you want to share with teachers?
Speaker 2:so If you are having students set goals and they are tracking and monitoring them, then this can be Extremely helpful when you meet with parents for conferences, because most of you are most likely going to be ending your quarters Soon and setting up parent-teacher conferences. I know that I am mine. Kids is like October or something, and in our district our kids do student-led conferences so they lead that conference. How powerful would it be for a kid to sit there and look at their parents and say this is the goal that I have set for myself as a writer or as a scientist or as a you know historian, and this is what I want to do and this is how I'm working toward it and this is my progress so far. Like for a kid to be able to self reflect and tell that to their parents would be huge.
Speaker 2:But even if the kids not there and you're there talking to the parent, there's nothing more powerful than than talking to a teacher who knows my kid like, who can tell me this is what they're working on and they can tell me like. It will allow you to even have those difficult conversations about what they're struggling with, but it's the goal they've set. Like your child knows that they're struggling with this, this is what they're trying. You can get the parent on board now and say, hey, they're still struggling and and I think that maybe you know, if we have some support from home in this manner, they might be able to do a little bit better. Or Maybe asking them every day about how they're working you know they're progress for this goal. So this is a way that kind of shifts from like your kid making an A or a, b or this or that to academics and the goals that they're setting and the kids ownership in that, you or your ownership as a teacher, but then also getting those parents involved in that, oh, so smart.
Speaker 1:I love that. Thank you so much for all these incredible ideas getting us ready for Not only parent-teacher conferences but moving students along their continuum of learning. I would love to hear from teachers as they're trying them. Wouldn't it be fun if they would share, like their systems? So if you're listening, to this.
Speaker 1:Teachers, we would love for you to share your ideas, take pictures, write as a post, like on social media. You know, be sure to tag dr Fallard on Twitter and compass PD and and Carrie Hepburn. We would love to. That'd be really fun just to see the things that you do and you take our ideas and make them better.
Speaker 2:I should say I think that's super important. To tie back, to just do it Whatever it looks like. However, it works for you and taking other people's ideas and trying them.
Speaker 1:That's true. That's how we make it better, that's how we make ourselves better, that's how we make education better and it's important for us to share. That's how we grow. If you didn't know, compass PD has a big goal of impacting the learning of 1 million students. One way you can help us meet that goal is by sharing this podcast with a fellow educator. And if you find this learning helpful our team works with leaders and teachers and school districts every day Reach out to us. We would be happy to talk with you about how we can help you reach your ambitious goals and I will be sure, in the show notes, to link all of dr Fallard's previous podcast so that you can listen and get even more Of her brilliance. Thanks everyone. Have a great day you.