Setting Goals with +Arianne Jones

Most “impossible” goals can be met simply by writing them down, believing in them, and then going full speed ahead as if they were routine.

-       by Don Lancaster

Goal setting is easy for teachers but difficult for eight year olds.  Teachers want their students to be successful: therefore, they have many goals in mind for each student in their class. The truth is, these goals have little meaning unless students understand them and make them their own. 

Athlete Reveal

Our athlete mentor, Arianne Jones, challenged the students in our class to select a personal goal and a class goal, to work on, throughout her year of mentorship.  This is a great activity for the starting our year together in grade three.  As a teacher, my classroom goal focuses on building a classroom community that encourages students to work together to help each other.  Understanding student interests provides me with necessary information for layering in lessons that promote a sense of belonging.

Arianne gave us some challenges - Arianne's Challenges

The students were excited to hear from their mentor. They sat upright, focusing on her message and marvelling that they were listening to a lesson, from an Olympic athlete, designed for them.  Such wonderful engagement!

Once again, my appreciation for “Classroom Champions” grew enormously. I felt so grateful for Arianne’s mentorship. I have mentored a few beginning teachers throughout my career and I understand how much time and effort is involved the mentoring process. I appreciate that an Olympic athlete would share her precious time, with my students, to encourage their success.

In the discussion that followed, most students understood how long term and short term goals were different yet supported each other.  A few students needed help to select short term goals that matched their long term goal.  In one case the student could not differentiate long term from short term goals, despite lengthy discussion.  This was a good insight for me because it confirmed my guess that his home environment doesn’t support this type of conversation.  I knew I had my work cut out for me!

Here is one example of Student Goals  More to follow as they are completed.

At this point, conversation switched to classroom goals.  The class quickly decided they wanted to improve their reading skills.  Each student agreed to work hard to move up three reading levels by the end of the school year.  Unfortunately, when asked to select short term goals, they could only identify “practice reading for 20 minutes each night” as a strategy to improve.

Perfect!  What a great opportunity for me to layer in lessons about reading with good accuracy, fluency and comprehension.  I know how critical it is to look at student background knowledge before building lessons.  It looks like I have started with a blank slate!  Suffice it to say, we will be learning a lot about what it takes to read proficiently as the year progresses.   We will be busy identifying efficient strategies and using daily practice to improve our reading skills.  You will see below that this goal will fit in very nicely with the grade three Alberta Language Arts Curriculum.  It is a happy fit for the year.

Before I sign off, let me emphasize that mentors have significant, powerful, positive impact. Mentors provide direction.  Our goal setting will influence choices we make for life-long learning. It will direct our daily choices and with reflection throughout the year, students will learn to make necessary changes as they fulfill or alter their goals.  Arianne’s challenge will set many big dreams in motion and direct the students in my class to make powerful, positive life choices.    

Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity, who aims at mediocrity will fall short of it.

-       Burmese saying

Curriculum links:

Alberta Health Curriculum:

Students will use resources effectively to manage and explore life roles and career opportunities and challenges.

L-3.4 identify the steps of the goal-setting process, and apply these components to short-term personal goals

Alberta Language Arts Curriculum:

General Outcome 1 (Gr. 3)

Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to explore thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences.

1.1         Discover and Explore

Express ideas and develop understanding

• connect prior knowledge and personal experiences with new ideas and information in oral, print and other media texts

• explain understanding of new concepts in own words

• explore ideas and feelings by asking questions, talking to others and referring to oral, print and other media texts

Experiment with language and forms

• choose appropriate forms of oral, print and other media texts for communicating and sharing ideas with others

Express preferences

• choose and share a variety of oral, print and other media texts in areas of particular interest

Set goals

• discuss areas of personal accomplishment as readers, writers and illustrators

General Outcome 2 (Gr. 3)

Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to comprehend and respond personally and critically to oral, print and other media texts.

2.1         Use Strategies and Cues

Use prior knowledge

• share ideas developed through interests, experiences and discussion that are related to new ideas and information

• identify the different ways in which oral, print and other media texts, such as stories, textbooks, letters, pictionaries and junior dictionaries, are organized, and use them to construct and confirm meaning

Use comprehension strategies

• use grammatical knowledge to predict words and sentence structures when reading narrative and expository materials

• apply a variety of strategies, such as setting a purpose, confirming predictions, making inferences and drawing conclusions

• identify the main idea or topic and supporting details in simple narrative and expository passages

• extend sight vocabulary to include predictable phrases and words related to language use

• read silently with increasing confidence and accuracy

• monitor and confirm meaning by rereading when necessary, and by applying knowledge of pragmatic, semantic, syntactic and graphophonic cueing systems

Use textual cues

• use headings, paragraphs, punctuation and quotation marks to assist with constructing and confirming meaning

• attend to and use knowledge of capitalization, commas in a series, question marks, exclamation marks and quotation marks to read accurately, fluently and with comprehension during oral and silent reading

Use phonics and structural analysis

• apply phonic rules and generalizations competently and confidently to read unfamiliar words in context

• apply word analysis strategies to segment words into parts or syllables, when reading unfamiliar words in context

• associate sounds with an increasing number of vowel combinations, consonant blends and digraphs, and letter clusters to read unfamiliar words in context

Use references

• put words in alphabetical order by first and second letter 

• use pictionaries, junior dictionaries and spell-check functions to confirm the spellings or locate the meanings of unfamiliar words in oral, print and other media texts

General Outcome 4 (Gr. 3)

Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to enhance the clarity and artistry of communication.

4.3         Present and Share

Present information

• present ideas and information on a topic, using a pre-established plan

Enhance presentation

•use print and non-print aids to illustrate ideas and information in oral, print and other media texts

Use effective oral and visual communication

• speak or present oral readings with fluency, rhythm, pace, and with appropriate intonation to emphasize key ideas

Demonstrate attentive listening and viewing

• rephrase, restate and explain the meaning of oral and visual presentations

• identify and set purposes for listening and viewing