November 8, 2023 • 13 mins
Are you ready to rewrite the playbook on student goal setting and progress monitoring? Join Jessica from Teaching Struggling Learners shifts the focus from tests to practical skills. We'll unpack strategies for setting meaningful yet attainable goals for students, centered around mastering foundational skills. We'll also explore effective ways to track these goals and ensure students can perform beyond the test environment.
On today's episode, we're challenging the conventional wisdom that test-focused goals are the gold standard in education. Jessica will shed light on the significance of setting skill-focused goals that promote thorough mastery of foundational skills, rather than merely gearing up for passing tests. Get a sneak peek into our next episode where we'll delve deeper into progress monitoring these skill-focused goals. Tune in, and let's rethink student goal setting together!
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Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
How annoying is it when you walk into a training
that was supposed to answer yourquestions or solve some
problems for you on one topic,but then you find out the
training is given on a relatedbut different topic.
So a couple years ago I went toa training on how to teach
(00:23):
phonics and how to increasefluency.
Right, I needed that to help mystudents, but it was really
about all the differentcomponents of reading and that
we needed to make kids learnfaster, but not the how behind
it Didn't get into the specificsof the phonics and the fluency
(00:46):
that I needed.
The goal, you know, what Ineeded to get better at, wasn't
what that professionaldevelopment or that intervention
was about.
So when I had to do my periodicreports on my yearly goal, you
know that I made for myself.
It just didn't add up.
(01:08):
We do this a lot, almost all thetime, to kids.
We make a goal, we provideinterventions on a related topic
, but then we progress, monitorsomething different.
Today let's focus on the firstand the last part of that,
because the interventions areobviously going to be for
(01:31):
another day.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling
Learners.
I'm a boy mom and a veteranteacher.
You're listening to theReaching Struggling Learners
podcast, where we talk all abouthelping students succeed
academically, socially andbehaviorally.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So we know that goals setting the right goal is very
important.
If our students are going to bemaking progress, we have to set
a goal that actually fits whatthey need to work on, and then
we also have to progress monitorthat goal, or else what are we
(02:27):
bothering to track?
So, in order to create progressmonitoring goals that make
sense and are easy to track, thefirst thing is we have to make
sure that we've figured out themost foundational skill.
You can check out last week'sepisode for help on how to do
that, but you can check out anyepisode.
(02:50):
The fact is, if we don't drilldown, if we don't figure out
what that most basic skill isthat the child is lacking in,
we're starting off on the wrongfoot.
Guys, we have to start withwhat is the one thing that is
causing the most simple thing,that is causing the problem for
(03:11):
the student.
Fix that and then we can get tothe more complicated stuff In
the most simple terms.
The second thing we got to dois you got to say what it is you
want the student to be able todo in this skill area, and we
(03:33):
need to have kind of a timeframefor that.
And, by the way.
Don't round up to the nextlevel.
Stick with this skill, even ifyou don't think it's going to
take forever.
You don't think it's going totake very long.
We can always up the goal whenwe're ready.
Last week I used the example ofI had a student that you know,
(03:53):
seventh grader, and the studentdidn't know all the letter
sounds.
Okay, yeah, the student wasreally really struggling to read
and we needed to work on CVCwords and we needed to work on
all these other things.
But we had to start with lettersounds.
And, okay, the student onlyneeded to remember, needed to
(04:13):
gain I think it was four or fiveextra sounds.
Well, that's where we started.
It didn't take very long.
We got some good motivation inthere right off the bat.
But the fact is we had to startat that most basic level.
And again, I know if you'veheard any of my other podcast
episodes I sound like a brokenrecord, but we talk about the
(04:38):
building of a house.
You have to have the foundation.
If letter sounds, well,phonemic awareness is really the
foundation of reading, but ifthe student doesn't have letter
sounds, the rest of the house isgoing to crumble.
They're not going to be able todo all the phonics pieces that
they need to, they're not goingto gain the fluency, and then
(04:59):
they're not going to have thereading comprehension that they
need.
Got to start at the mostfoundational skills.
So then we have to make sure.
Step three, make sure your goalis measurable.
All right, so that meanssomething that you can actually
see here, record with numbers.
(05:20):
For example, you can see here,count how many addition problems
in math a student doescorrectly in a minute, or the
number of sight words that theycan read in a minute or two
minutes or however long.
You can figure out the fluencynumbers, but you can't see or
(05:44):
write down graph.
You will do better or willimprove or will increase.
You're setting yourself up tofail if you're putting that kind
of stuff out there.
Set yourself up to besuccessful.
Set your students up to besuccessful and be able to record
(06:05):
real numbers.
For example, I've seen a lot oftimes that a student will
increase star scores or mapscores or what have you.
That's a long-term goal.
Yes, we would like all of ourstudents to increase their star
(06:26):
scores or their map scores ortheir F-CAT scores or whatever
it is in your state.
But the fact is, thosescreeners, those tests, they
test so many different skillsand so that's like saying,
putting down on paper, thestudent will get better in
(06:48):
reading.
Okay, how do I put a number tothat?
How exactly do I put a numberto that?
And I've seen some schools,school districts, teachers who
had some extra star tests orwhatever laying around and they
made those poor babies takethose tests over and over and
(07:10):
over again and they would bringthose to the meetings and say
look, look, they're doing better, they're doing better.
Yeah, you're right, thatstudent is absolutely doing
better at taking that test, butare they learning the skills
that they need to be able toperform the skill outside that
test?
We don't know.
(07:31):
So that's why it is really,really important that you have
to have a goal that is skillfocused.
If the goal that you make is thestudent will increase star
scores or will increase mapscores or something of that
nature that is based on a testthat we generally give three
(07:55):
times a year, honey, you don'thave a goal.
You have wishful thinking,because you don't know what all
it's actually going to be goinginto making that student
actually become successful inthe skills that they have
deficits in.
So make your goalsskill-focused, not test-focused.
(08:18):
So let's say you have a student, like my student, for example,
who was doing great and did notknow like four or five of the
letters and that was it.
So how do you make a goal whenyou know you're in your school,
you are only going to be able tomeet every six to nine weeks,
which is typical.
You only get to meet on astudent every six to nine weeks
(08:41):
because that's when you get thedata and all the things.
Okay, you know that that childis going to probably you know
meet the goal of.
The child will be able toidentify all the letters of the
alphabet and will be able toidentify the most common sounds.
You know that they're probablygoing to move past that pretty
quickly now that you'veidentified it.
(09:03):
So some simple things.
To make a goal a little bitmore difficult if you're limited
by your school or your districtis to add a time frame and make
it related to something thatwill help them with the next few
skills up.
Okay.
So, for example, for my student, if I had had to have a time
(09:25):
frame of six to nine weeks, thenI would have said that the
student would be able toidentify all the most common
letter sounds in a minute orwould be able to identify, you
know, the all the letter soundswhen used in CVC words.
So that uses what they need andjust bumps it up just enough.
(09:52):
And again, just because yourgoal, the student meets your
goal, doesn't mean that that'sthe only thing you can work on.
If that student, if yourstudent is, has met their goal
but you're not meeting for threemore weeks, okay, continue your
progress monitoring on that.
But use what they've learned.
That's the beauty of thereading and the math is the
(10:15):
progress monitoring the skillsthat they're using, the more
basic skills.
If they have passed that thatgoal, have mastered it.
Okay, they're still using thoseskills in the higher levels.
So wonderful, your student isable to to identify all the
letter sounds.
Can they identify them in CVCwords?
How about CVC e words?
(10:37):
How about we're not just doingthe most common sounds anymore?
You can extend this when youneed to and just put it in your
notes.
It's not that big a deal.
So some tricks, tips and tricksto just increase a goals.
Difficulty is make sure that you, you, you can look at that
(11:00):
fluency, put a time limit on itand all that.
And then, for students who arereading words for example,
you're trying to get them toread CVC words, okay, but you
think they're going to masterthat in a couple weeks?
Alright, wonderful, maybe theycould read those words in a
sentence instead of individual.
(11:21):
Okay, if you're doing additionand subtraction, maybe, instead
of just doing addition problems,maybe they can do the addition
problems in a minute, a certainnumber in a minute, or maybe
that.
If you're working onsubtraction problems, okay, can
they do it when it's mixedproblems?
So they've, they've alreadymastered addition problems.
(11:45):
They've met, they're almostdone with mastering subtraction.
Maybe you can add it in thatthey can do mixed problems now
and again.
You can have fluency in there.
There's lots of different waysto take the, the goals, the
small skills that you're workingon, and expand them up just
(12:06):
enough to keep the kiddoschallenged but also to show that
progress and to keep it stillon the same level that it needs
to be for the student.
The biggest thing is thetakeaways I guess from this
episode that I hope you run awayfrom is number one do yourself
a favor and make your goalsskill focused, never test
(12:30):
focused, because, oh goodness,we've already got enough of an
emphasis on tests.
Let's work on the skills thatthe kids need.
And the next thing is don't beafraid to make your goals at
that lower level, because it isso much better that you go slow
and that those kids really,really master 100% not 80%, 100%
(12:54):
of those foundational skills,because that's just going to
make every other skill above itthat much stronger.
So I hope you took somethingaway from this that was, you
know, going to be helpful.
Next week, we are going to betalking about how to actually
(13:17):
make sure that you're progress,monitoring that beautiful goal
that you just made, that youspent, that skill focused goal
that you just made.
And until next time, may yourcoffee be strong, your students
calm and your administratorssupportive.
Bye.
How annoying is it when you walk into a training
that was supposed to answer yourquestions or solve some
problems for you on one topic,but then you find out the
training is given on a relatedbut different topic.
So a couple years ago I went toa training on how to teach
(00:23):
phonics and how to increasefluency.
Right, I needed that to help mystudents, but it was really
about all the differentcomponents of reading and that
we needed to make kids learnfaster, but not the how behind
it Didn't get into the specificsof the phonics and the fluency
(00:46):
that I needed.
The goal, you know, what Ineeded to get better at, wasn't
what that professionaldevelopment or that intervention
was about.
So when I had to do my periodicreports on my yearly goal, you
know that I made for myself.
It just didn't add up.
(01:08):
We do this a lot, almost all thetime, to kids.
We make a goal, we provideinterventions on a related topic
, but then we progress, monitorsomething different.
Today let's focus on the firstand the last part of that,
because the interventions areobviously going to be for
(01:31):
another day.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling
Learners.
I'm a boy mom and a veteranteacher.
You're listening to theReaching Struggling Learners
podcast, where we talk all abouthelping students succeed
academically, socially andbehaviorally.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So we know that goals setting the right goal is very
important.
If our students are going to bemaking progress, we have to set
a goal that actually fits whatthey need to work on, and then
we also have to progress monitorthat goal, or else what are we
(02:27):
bothering to track?
So, in order to create progressmonitoring goals that make
sense and are easy to track, thefirst thing is we have to make
sure that we've figured out themost foundational skill.
You can check out last week'sepisode for help on how to do
that, but you can check out anyepisode.
(02:50):
The fact is, if we don't drilldown, if we don't figure out
what that most basic skill isthat the child is lacking in,
we're starting off on the wrongfoot.
Guys, we have to start withwhat is the one thing that is
causing the most simple thing,that is causing the problem for
(03:11):
the student.
Fix that and then we can get tothe more complicated stuff In
the most simple terms.
The second thing we got to dois you got to say what it is you
want the student to be able todo in this skill area, and we
(03:33):
need to have kind of a timeframefor that.
And, by the way.
Don't round up to the nextlevel.
Stick with this skill, even ifyou don't think it's going to
take forever.
You don't think it's going totake very long.
We can always up the goal whenwe're ready.
Last week I used the example ofI had a student that you know,
(03:53):
seventh grader, and the studentdidn't know all the letter
sounds.
Okay, yeah, the student wasreally really struggling to read
and we needed to work on CVCwords and we needed to work on
all these other things.
But we had to start with lettersounds.
And, okay, the student onlyneeded to remember, needed to
(04:13):
gain I think it was four or fiveextra sounds.
Well, that's where we started.
It didn't take very long.
We got some good motivation inthere right off the bat.
But the fact is we had to startat that most basic level.
And again, I know if you'veheard any of my other podcast
episodes I sound like a brokenrecord, but we talk about the
(04:38):
building of a house.
You have to have the foundation.
If letter sounds, well,phonemic awareness is really the
foundation of reading, but ifthe student doesn't have letter
sounds, the rest of the house isgoing to crumble.
They're not going to be able todo all the phonics pieces that
they need to, they're not goingto gain the fluency, and then
(04:59):
they're not going to have thereading comprehension that they
need.
Got to start at the mostfoundational skills.
So then we have to make sure.
Step three, make sure your goalis measurable.
All right, so that meanssomething that you can actually
see here, record with numbers.
(05:20):
For example, you can see here,count how many addition problems
in math a student doescorrectly in a minute, or the
number of sight words that theycan read in a minute or two
minutes or however long.
You can figure out the fluencynumbers, but you can't see or
(05:44):
write down graph.
You will do better or willimprove or will increase.
You're setting yourself up tofail if you're putting that kind
of stuff out there.
Set yourself up to besuccessful.
Set your students up to besuccessful and be able to record
(06:05):
real numbers.
For example, I've seen a lot oftimes that a student will
increase star scores or mapscores or what have you.
That's a long-term goal.
Yes, we would like all of ourstudents to increase their star
(06:26):
scores or their map scores ortheir F-CAT scores or whatever
it is in your state.
But the fact is, thosescreeners, those tests, they
test so many different skillsand so that's like saying,
putting down on paper, thestudent will get better in
(06:48):
reading.
Okay, how do I put a number tothat?
How exactly do I put a numberto that?
And I've seen some schools,school districts, teachers who
had some extra star tests orwhatever laying around and they
made those poor babies takethose tests over and over and
(07:10):
over again and they would bringthose to the meetings and say
look, look, they're doing better, they're doing better.
Yeah, you're right, thatstudent is absolutely doing
better at taking that test, butare they learning the skills
that they need to be able toperform the skill outside that
test?
We don't know.
(07:31):
So that's why it is really,really important that you have
to have a goal that is skillfocused.
If the goal that you make is thestudent will increase star
scores or will increase mapscores or something of that
nature that is based on a testthat we generally give three
(07:55):
times a year, honey, you don'thave a goal.
You have wishful thinking,because you don't know what all
it's actually going to be goinginto making that student
actually become successful inthe skills that they have
deficits in.
So make your goalsskill-focused, not test-focused.
(08:18):
So let's say you have a student, like my student, for example,
who was doing great and did notknow like four or five of the
letters and that was it.
So how do you make a goal whenyou know you're in your school,
you are only going to be able tomeet every six to nine weeks,
which is typical.
You only get to meet on astudent every six to nine weeks
(08:41):
because that's when you get thedata and all the things.
Okay, you know that that childis going to probably you know
meet the goal of.
The child will be able toidentify all the letters of the
alphabet and will be able toidentify the most common sounds.
You know that they're probablygoing to move past that pretty
quickly now that you'veidentified it.
(09:03):
So some simple things.
To make a goal a little bitmore difficult if you're limited
by your school or your districtis to add a time frame and make
it related to something thatwill help them with the next few
skills up.
Okay.
So, for example, for my student, if I had had to have a time
(09:25):
frame of six to nine weeks, thenI would have said that the
student would be able toidentify all the most common
letter sounds in a minute orwould be able to identify, you
know, the all the letter soundswhen used in CVC words.
So that uses what they need andjust bumps it up just enough.
(09:52):
And again, just because yourgoal, the student meets your
goal, doesn't mean that that'sthe only thing you can work on.
If that student, if yourstudent is, has met their goal
but you're not meeting for threemore weeks, okay, continue your
progress monitoring on that.
But use what they've learned.
That's the beauty of thereading and the math is the
(10:15):
progress monitoring the skillsthat they're using, the more
basic skills.
If they have passed that thatgoal, have mastered it.
Okay, they're still using thoseskills in the higher levels.
So wonderful, your student isable to to identify all the
letter sounds.
Can they identify them in CVCwords?
How about CVC e words?
(10:37):
How about we're not just doingthe most common sounds anymore?
You can extend this when youneed to and just put it in your
notes.
It's not that big a deal.
So some tricks, tips and tricksto just increase a goals.
Difficulty is make sure that you, you, you can look at that
(11:00):
fluency, put a time limit on itand all that.
And then, for students who arereading words for example,
you're trying to get them toread CVC words, okay, but you
think they're going to masterthat in a couple weeks?
Alright, wonderful, maybe theycould read those words in a
sentence instead of individual.
(11:21):
Okay, if you're doing additionand subtraction, maybe, instead
of just doing addition problems,maybe they can do the addition
problems in a minute, a certainnumber in a minute, or maybe
that.
If you're working onsubtraction problems, okay, can
they do it when it's mixedproblems?
So they've, they've alreadymastered addition problems.
(11:45):
They've met, they're almostdone with mastering subtraction.
Maybe you can add it in thatthey can do mixed problems now
and again.
You can have fluency in there.
There's lots of different waysto take the, the goals, the
small skills that you're workingon, and expand them up just
(12:06):
enough to keep the kiddoschallenged but also to show that
progress and to keep it stillon the same level that it needs
to be for the student.
The biggest thing is thetakeaways I guess from this
episode that I hope you run awayfrom is number one do yourself
a favor and make your goalsskill focused, never test
(12:30):
focused, because, oh goodness,we've already got enough of an
emphasis on tests.
Let's work on the skills thatthe kids need.
And the next thing is don't beafraid to make your goals at
that lower level, because it isso much better that you go slow
and that those kids really,really master 100% not 80%, 100%
(12:54):
of those foundational skills,because that's just going to
make every other skill above itthat much stronger.
So I hope you took somethingaway from this that was, you
know, going to be helpful.
Next week, we are going to betalking about how to actually
(13:17):
make sure that you're progress,monitoring that beautiful goal
that you just made, that youspent, that skill focused goal
that you just made.
And until next time, may yourcoffee be strong, your students
calm and your administratorssupportive.
Bye.
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