Student Learning Goals

This post is seventh of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Sample Student’s Learning Goals and Assessment Plan

Students can personalize their learning goals to make them more relevant, achievable, and interesting. The chart below illustrates how Davi, a second-grade student, personalized his learning goals and plan in each of his subject areas. These goals combine his understanding of what he needs to learn at his grade level as well as his specific interests. As appropriate, this may start with peer feedback. Then Davi meets with his teacher to discuss his progress and in due course, with his parents at student-parent conferences. He continues to modify and revise his goals for each cycle after receiving feedback.

Content Area Standards	Student’s Personal Learning Goal	Assessment Plan
Language Arts: CCSS: A Lexile represents the complexity of the text and individual reading ability. (CCSS Appendix)	I will continue to read 300-500 Lexile level books for 20 minutes each night at home. My goal is to be reading 450 to 650 level by April. I am learning how to write stories about people. I want to describe what my family looks like, how they act, and what they are thinking as compared to my family’s ancestors.	I will maintain a record of the Lexile levels of the books I am reading. With my teacher, I will make sure the numbers are getting bigger.
Math: CCSS.2.oa.a.1 Solve one and two-step word problems: adding to and taking from.	I will continue to do my math homework; I will also complete a word problem every day at home in my workbook. My parents try to help, but I still need more help from my teacher.	I’ll show the teacher my work, and when I get stuck, she can help me figure out what I didn’t understand and what to do next.
Social Studies: Examine and identify cultural differences within the community.	I am creating a family history book with pictures, drawings, and stories about my ancestors and how they lived compared to how my family lives today. I got pictures of my family and ancestors. I have written a story about the farm that my mother’s parents lived on when she was a little girl and put them in together in my family history book.	I’ll ask my peers to use the success criteria for my sequence, design, neatness, and clarity and give me feedback on how well I am doing with my family history book.
Science: NGSS 2-LS2-1 Investigate water and sunlight to see what plants need to grow.	I am learning how to create a garden plan and determine how much water and sunlight plants need. I am sketching vegetable growth each week when I work in the garden. I have a journal for my notes and sketches. The tomatoes did not blossom because it was too cold. The zucchini plants are growing zucchinis that are 10 inches long. They like the foggy fall weather.	I will note what worked and what didn’t and make specific suggestions for the next growing season.
Nutrition and Physical Activity	I will walk around the block at my home twice each day after school. I want to aim for three loops in the same time period. I will eat a nutritious breakfast each day before school. I will be able to explain what is contained in a nutritious breakfast and compare my food choices.	I will use a fitness tracker to record my laps and speed and look for improvement. I’ll focus on reduced fat milk, whole grains, lean meats, and fruits.
Other: Performing Arts	I will continue practicing how to draw animals by copying from a book. I will watch a YouTube video each week that shows me how to draw a different animal. I will then get feedback on my art.	I will put all my drawings in order and ask the teacher in what ways they have improved or could be better.
Other: Spanish	I will practice talking to my family in Spanish for 5 minutes each day. I hope to listen to some online kids’ language tutorials. I have started recording my new words.	At dinner, we talk about the food in Spanish and look up ones we don’t know. I am illustrating my own Spanish food dictionary.
Behavior: Manage Emotions	I will keep a star chart at home in managing my emotions when I am angry or frustrated. I am learning how to go to my room and calm down. I’ll ask my friend about the deep breathing and mindset exercises he learned.	Wow, belly breathing really works to calm me down. Maybe I will do yoga.

Engaging Challenged Students

Everyone has times that they are focused on faraway thoughts or looming problems, only to snap back to the present, unaware of what’s been going on in the here and now. Students too, may be sitting in your classrooms, eyes open and heads forward, while worrying about a family member who is ill or daydreaming about an upcoming trip.

There’s a difference between being present and being engaged. For students who have social, emotional, or learning difficulties, learning how not to be noticed can be a priority. These students may get passed on to the next grade or level because they do not have behavioral problems, but are rather quiet and compliant learners. By the time they get to high schools, they can be several grade levels behind.

How to Check for Student Understanding

On behalf of those quiet and compliant learners, it is even more important to check for understanding as a camouflaged lack of comprehension can lead to disengagement. Other causes of low engagement are developmental difficulties, struggles with self-regulation, and social/emotional hurdles. Individual attention spans are only a few minutes long and may be influenced by a student’s interest, activity level, setting/location, or assigned group. Use strategies such as these to keep students engaged:

Ask questions that require deeper and higher thinking.
Have students tell a partner what they just learned.
Add movement to learning such as signals for agree/disagree, or sure/unsure.
Ask students for periodic summaries and recaps: These can be submitted as individual check-in slips or collaborative summaries.

Our January 4^th post will explain how students assess their learning outcomes. For more charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to own their learning, you can purchase Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020) from Roman and Littlefield.

How to Parent Today’s Kids for Success

Parents become anxious when considering the negative effects of becoming a tiger mama or a helicopter parent with their children during these Covid pandemic times. Although they strive to protect their children from harm, parents also want to ensure that their children are successful in today’s world. For example, dozens of parents purchased their children’s acceptances into competitive colleges by sending funds to a fraudulent checking account managed by a corrupt college counselor. The counselor used these funds to bribe college sports coaches to accept unqualified students on a college team and paid corrupt test proctors to change students’ standardized testing results. Some prospective college students may have signed their college admissions packets without understanding the implications of their parents’ actions. Others believed that their parents were being morally responsible when helping them falsify their college application documentation.

Parents’ Stressful Responses

As our children return to schools, parents are struggling with how to model effective parenting skills while juggling demanding careers, multiple jobs, and ensuring that their children are safe during the Covid pandemic, when traveling or living in crime ridden communities, and while surfing the internet. Many parents solve these challenges by:

Helicoptering their children with too many demands for their time to exhaustion
Allowing too much freedom as their children become lured into gang-related activities, online gaming, or becoming addicted to internet activities.
Forcing their children to grow up too quickly with extensive sibling care and household responsibilities while parents work more than one job to feed their family

Solutions for Managing Daily Stresses

In the next few weeks, our blogs will share:

Proven strategies for learning responsible behaviors that nurture independence, problem-solving, and resiliency skills
Best practices for healthy living, and moral and spiritual guidance
Effective partnership strategies with schools, career explorations, and planning for college and careers
Daily time management suggestions for families and when encountering life’s more difficult challenges (i.e. illness, crime, divorce, or natural disasters)

We will include skill building guidance, case studies, worksheet samples, and added resources when applicable. The various activities and examples included in each blog are collected from over 30 years of field experiences with families in schools and communities. Parents have reported that these skills provide “valuable information with many smart tips . . .” and “are a great resource . . . to maintain a positive outlook while navigating all sorts of situations with two young children.”

Teaching Children Responsible Behaviors

From the time children are preschoolers, it is important to set appropriate boundaries in how they relate to family members and how the family functions daily. Each child should start helping with household chores and sibling support by the time they start elementary school. They must learn to organize their day for personal hygiene, chores, and maintaining personal belongings. Children need loving guidance, modeling, and feedback as they grow to become self-sufficient responsible family members.

Authoritative Parenting Characteristics

There are many types of parents in the world. Some parents are very authoritative and try and manage every aspect of their children’s lives. These tiger mamas or helicopter parents tend to exhibit some of the following personality characteristics:

Are demanding about a need and will not discuss options or negotiate choices
Believe that their approach to life and daily challenges are optimal
Expect that their children will follow their rules
Can be excessively punitive or shaming when a child has misbehaved
May discipline by physically hurting the child, placing on probation for extended periods of time, or limiting access to a privilege for an extended period of time
Can be intolerable when their children express emotions, demonstrate weakness, or are fearful of change

Permissive Parenting Traits

A permissive parent does not set boundaries or consequences for their children’s misbehavior. Many permissive parents are over-whelmed with daily life or do not want to squander their children’s curiosity and passion for life. These parents tend to:

Have children care for themselves and do not provide added support for food preparation, bedtimes, homework completion, or basic hygiene.
Ignore or are excessively tolerant when their children are rambunctious and disregard the safety and care of personal possessions
Allow their children to work through conflicts and daily challenges on their own without any support or guidance
Are too busy or preoccupied with their own lives to provide quality time and guidance to their children
Allow their children to manage their own lives without consequences for misbehavior, not attending school, not caring for possessions, or planning for future careers.

Coaching and Mentor Parenting

Parents can effectively serve as coaches and mentors for their children. For example, they can consider their children’s personalities, how to provide choices when setting boundaries, and winning cooperation through effective problem-solving communications. These parents support their children by:

Effectively listening to their children’s needs and clarifying what they want to achieve when asking for freedoms and responsibilities
Helping our children identify an appropriate solution to a challenge and setting clear expectations for achieving success
Helping our children understand boundaries that must be determined to ensure their safety and success
Reassure our children feel loved and respected with their various contributions to the family and personal successes
Giving our children responsibilities and opportunities to support the family and community.

Much success as you strive to effectively mentor and coach your children.

Mary Ann

Engaging Our Children in Daily Assignment Assessments

As many students begin their school year in a remote classroom, teachers and parents can help their children understand their learning intentions and identify effective assessment strategies for demonstrating learning. Assessment definitions typically include these key ideas:

Measures the outcomes of teaching and learning
Gathers and uses information about students’ knowledge and skills
Relies on empirical data

A More Comprehensive Definition

An assessment also relies on gathering, analyzing, and using evidence and information from multiple sources about learning outcomes in ways that best support students, inform instruction, make educational decisions, and improve learning outcomes. It is most effective when it benefits both the giver and receiver. What if there was a way to document a “return on assessment?” This chart describes what happens when students are engaged IN the process of assessment as compared to the benefits when they are empowered AS assessors.

Engaging and Empowering Learners

ENGAGING LEARNERS IN ASSESSMENT	EMPOWERING LEARNERS AS ASSESSORS
TEACHERS ROLE Reconsider the use of quizzes, tests, and other traditional “measures” of learning: Alternatively, rely on practices that involve students in the process and practices of assessment. i.e., They write the questions.	STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES Rely on the best practices and research on student-engaged assessments that develop learners’ confidence, readiness to be assessed, and outcomes of learning.
Share explicit learning intentions that students deconstruct into actionable and attainable learning processes and outcomes. i.e., How can you use this?	Explain their goals, their learning intentions, and how they developed a personalized plan and process.
Offer a practical and predictable path for learning. Anticipate the need for flexibility and support. i.e., Incorporate a “Learning Tracker.” (Italics indicate links)	Describe the path they planned and followed, what went as expected, and times that they needed to be flexible, backtrack, or take detours.
Incorporate progress and growth indicators such as checklists and rubrics for students to check as they monitor progress along the path of learning.	Routinely display descriptions and documentation of their progress as well as areas for improvement.
Display exemplars of varying levels of achievement of goals: Have students compare and evaluate the exemplars.	Present explicit evidence of learning and describe how their outcomes aligned or deviated from the learning intentions and plan.
Provide goal-based and actionable feedback that describes ways to resolve misunderstandings as well as close lingering learning gaps.	To improve their learning, students review and explain their use of feedback that is timely, relevant actionable, and user-friendly.
Involve students in assessing their foundational skills and knowledge, how they will monitor progress, and feasibly evaluate the outcomes. i.e. i.e. assess pre/post	Students present and explain where their learning started, the steps they took, and how the quality of their final outcomes.

Much success as you help your children learn how to self-assess their many online assignments.

Laura

Student Leaders Seek Program Development

COVID-19 Leadership Challenges for College Ready Students: Part 1 of 3

In response to protecting students from Covid-19, many colleges will not be using SAT and ACT examinations as part of the college acceptance process. Schools will continue to be challenged on how they will grade students as they rely on more distance learning assignments. Even though some students will struggle on how they will demonstrate their leadership and community service, others will pursue significant learning activities through school-based, community, and project-based learning activities.

Students Seek Opportunities

As a volunteer trainer for Silicon Valley SCORE (www.siliconvalley.score.org), I provide trainings on how folks can develop and recruit volunteers and write grants for nonprofit projects. At the peak of the shelter-in-place state orders, I was contacted by high school students who wanted to expand school-based programs for students. The students had formed their nonprofit services under nonprofit sponsors. When contacted, I emailed an online computer template for students to complete. I also told them that I would introduce them to nonprofit leaders that might be able to serve as their fiscal agents or include proposed programs as an agency service. Finally, I advised students to buy a grantwriting book (e.g. Simplified Grantwriting) and goggle how to write program goals, objectives, and activities, and review examples of funded grants. Many students could use these projects as their leadership documentation to be accepted into top ranked universities.

The Learning Process

Students would then email their draft grant templates and set up Zoom meetings to discuss potential grant proposals. Grant development challenges may include:

The students could experience technology challenges with a limited ability to effectively demonstrate service delivery skills and program materials.
An incomplete grant template may not adequately identify a target population or justify a need for services with supporting data.
Added program flexibility must consider the needs of students in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An evaluation process should docuement how students can measure changes in program participants’ behaviors and academic performances because of a program’s interventions.
Budget line items with a justification for specific costs must calculate the actual cost for the program.

Is is also essential for students to take the time to review other funded grants, online grantwriting resources, online grant development options, and have peers and adults review their work. Students may become overwhelmed in how they must adapt their program with modified programming this school year. These real-world challenges will provide students with rich lessons for life-long learning.

Much success as you nurture your children’s leadership skills in fundraising and program development.

Mary Ann

How to Stay Sane While Distance Learning with your Children

How to Stay Sane While Distance Learning with Your Children

Many of California’s students have already completed at least four weeks of distance learning assignments. Some students were sent home with workbooks and packets of papers to complete. Others were given computers and online accounts. And still others waited while their schools posted weekly assignments online. I have observed various teachers as they have struggled to learn how to conduct teaching online overnight. The victories are many and the students are thriving. I am fortunate that I am able to tutor students with their parents on reading and writing assignments.

These are best practices when guiding your children in their learning:

Make if fun. If your child is rebelling about learning, schedule one hour each day for a formalized learning lesson and the rest of learning can be accomplished with playful activities. These may include performing art projects, physical fitness, home repairs, balancing checkbooks, organizing photo pictures, and cooking. Older children can play school with younger children and teach the siblings all that they know.
Don’t stress. The most important gift you can give your child is your sanity. Make sure to take care of yourself first and exercise daily, eat well, and sleep regularly.
Keep a schedule. Most parents try to get school work completed each morning after their children get dressed, eat breakfast, and complete their chores. Then afternoons are free for playful and learning activities. When parents work full time, they may schedule the learning hour for their lunch break.
Get everyone outside each day regardless of the weather. When families shelter in place for weeks, it is important to get outside, feel the sun, gaze at the blue sky, and feel the rain, sleet, or snow.
Take a break from being plugged into electronics. All of us are spending hours on the phone, watching television, and working on computers when sheltering in place. It is important to enjoy the quiet and our families when only physically isolating from others.
Keep smiling and laughing. This cannot be overemphasized as this is the best medicine that we can offer ourselves and families each day. At first, we were sending funny online stories and photos to each other. Now we are relishing the daily stories. Today, my daughter sent me a picture of how her four-year-old daughter trimmed her lovely head of hair with the caption that the scissors are now on lockdown.
Our children will thrive when learning at home. As our kids become more relaxed with using a computer, they will be more comfortable with completing the mandatory online testing. Most students I tutor are very proficient at following assignments when not distracted and not feeling overwhelmed when using the computer.
Treasure the celebrations. Although distance learning assignments and social distancing as families are challenging, we are still being creative with celebrations. We stood several feet away from our grandson and daughter as they opened their birthday presents. Each participant was given a yummy lollipop as part of our celebration. Easter and Passover events are being shared online through Zoom. Churches are capturing their sermons through video presentations and CDs.
Keep the faith as this too shall pass. Although it may feel like a lifetime before things return to normal, we will all achieve a new normal. We will still need each other and give back to others. We will still enjoy our freedoms, work hard, and play harder. And we will all cherish the love of family members and friends.
There will be a new normal. As we process and adapt to the many changes in our lives, we are teaching our children how to become adaptable, resilient, and capable of learning and changing careers as new needs emerge and our lives evolve. When talking with friends, I am excited about the many new teaching skills I am learning when working with students and their families. Students are excited to work with me alongside a parent. And I am excited to focus on trying many new learning strategies when having the time to have the children process their learning style and successes.

Happy home learning!

Mary Ann