Reading Goals

5 days to go until the end of the year! I absolutely can't wait! Sure I'll miss my kids, but boy am I exhausted! Sorry for the lack of posting in recent weeks but I've been coming home and collapsing!

Here is something I've been doing the last term with my class. At my school, we are required to set individual reading goals for each of our students every five weeks. Thank you CAFE and conferencing for making this easy to do! (The time consuming part is having the beginning data and ending data in order to show growth, or lack thereof, every five weeks to show the powers that be before amending the goals/setting new ones). This is how I've displayed my goals for each student (another requirement).

It's on a window so you can see the blu-tac sticking the construction paper to the window! I don't have that much wall space - two sides of my room are completely covered in windows and one more has one of those concertina doors across the whole length of it so it can't be used for anything :( It's actually a shame to cover them up because when you look out my windows you see our local forest less than 20m away! It's a great view!

So anyway, each of my kiddos have a leaf with their reading goal on it (e.g. summarising texts without retelling, using a particular decoding strategy, finding the main idea etc).

I then end up grouping kids together that have similiar goals and meeting with them (even though they might be at different reading levels) during the time I usually do guided reading. I LOVE it! I end up planning a series of lessons that focus on the goal  and meeting with just the kids that have that goal. I set aside two days a week to meet with Goal Groups rather than levelled groups. I've found this really beneficial and the kids have come a long way.


I'm looking at changing it for next year... perhaps a Pot of Goals! and each of the goals are written on a gold coin... not feeling it. Does anyone have any other ideas??

Also, are you looking for some great Christmas activities? Amy at The Land of Second Grade is having a giveaway of two of her Christmas products. Be sure to head on over! It's being drawn Sunday.