Here is a quick idea for helping your students take ownership of their writing Goals. It's a sheet of basic kindergarten goals that can be cut out and glued (one at a time) to a sheet kids keep in their writing folders and refer to every day.
Here's how it works...
- I keep the masters (see below). I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue if I put kids in charge of cutting and gluing their own goals.
- I set the goals with the kids during a writing conference. We decide, together, what they need to work on to make their writing better. We cut out that goal and glue it down to the chart they keep in their folder.
- The kids generally only get one new goal at a time.
- I remind the kids every day when we begin Writing Workshop to check their writing goal.
- When I conference with kids, I ask them how they're doing on their goal. We look through their writing to see if they are consistently meeting that goal, or if they still need to work on it.
- If they have met it (for example, if their goal was to leave spaces between their words and they consistently do that), I let them color in that goal on their chart and we choose new goal.
- The goals work across writing genres. So whether we're working on writing personal narratives or all-about books, they can still work on each goal.
- We work on other writing skills at the same time. For example--the whole class might be working on writing facts, or adding details to a personal narrative. But at the same time, individual kids will be working on the differentiated goals on their chart.
- Not every writing conference focuses on these goals, but I almost always mention them. For example, I may conference with a student about our whole class objective--writing facts. But at the end of the conference, I might add a quick "Let's see how you're doing with your writing goal..."
- The goals are not necessarily sequential. Some kids skip goals completely because they've already mastered them. Some kids go back and work on a goal that they had once mastered but now need more practice.
We keep a chart in the room so we always know what goals we're working on.
If you think this might be helpful in your classroom, you can click the link below to get it for yourself. Please note, this is a view only file (Google Doc), so you just have to click and print. There is no need to request access (and unfortunately, I cannot give it).
