A New Beginning

I just love that as teachers we have many opportunities for new beginnings; or clean slates.  It always seems that after Winter Break something magical seems to happen to kindergarteners.  They have a better understanding of school and are ready for the next phase in learning.

Months ago, I purchased this craftivity from All Students Can Shine knowing that I would use it to help us set our learning goals.

To begin, we read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution.  We learned about resolutions and come up with a definition for this word based on the book.

Then, we looked at our ESGI data.  I showed the class our data for language arts and math.  But they wanted to know more. They asked if they could see their own data. So, I showed them each their data. As I did, we talked about the areas which we all excelled and those which were important for our overall learning success.  As we had this discussion, I could tell that some students were beginning to understand the impact learning has.

I met with each student individually to talk about their resolutions.  Each child was honest and did an excellent job of selecting a resolution that reflected what they needed the most to be successful in the classroom.  We talked about how we could each support one another to help make their resolution a success.

I love this bulletin board and plan to keep it up for the remainder of the year. Why? Because it will serve as a reminder of our learning goals.

What does your class do to reflect upon their learning?

Happy Teaching!