New Writing Focus for Goal Setting and Reflection

Over the school holidays our school attended a teacher only day at Southwell School as part of the ConnectEd cluster.  I was lucky enough to attend a workshop by Lynden Cook from Rototuna School.  Some of the things that he is doing with his Year 5/6 class to do with student voice and choice, goal setting and reflection and also buddy work was so expiring!  There was probably 50 things that i came away from the workshop thinking 'man i can't wait to try that with my class'!

Thankfully i made sure i honed in on just one or two things to focus on first so I didn't get myself too overwhelmed and swamped!  I decided to start by first looking at something similar to his goal setting box and a 'ladder of success' as this linked nicely to the goals setting and student voice focus we are currently undertaking in our inquiry project in the senior school.

Here is the goal setting box that i am currently trailing and using with my class:

The blue part of the box is for the children to write the purposed of their writing.  Up until now, I have found that students didn't really understand the three purposes for writing, and the purpose for the writing task they were doing.  Now that we are have these goal boxes, the purpose for writing is always the first part of our writing lesson.  This also leads into our audience - who will be reading this text and what do we want them to be able to do after reading our work?  Students have become more focused and understand why we are doing different pieces of writing - meaning that their writing is better.

The green box is for students to write the style of writing we are doing

The white box is for students to writing in our class focus goal and their own personal goal which they will select from the writing matrix in child speak that we have created as part of our inquiry writing focus.

Underneath this is some check in boxes.  These checks are completed with their writing buddy or by themselves.  These boxes are designed to help students be more self regulated and less dependent on myself or have to wait for me to check planning or to tell them they are now ready for buddy conferencing.  They can follow the checks and make these decisions themselves.

The ladder of success is a way for them at the end of a piece of writing to assess how they went with the goals set before starting their writing.  Instead of reflecting on goals and going on either 'ive achieved it' or 'i've not achieved it'  students can now assess themselves on the ladder.  Meaning if they feel they haven't quite made it to achieving the goal completely, they can still feel successful by moving themselves along the ladder one or two steps.