Participant #1:
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Hello, and welcome to episode 123 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond, and I'm a middle school digital music teacher in Washington, DC. And of course, I implement Modern Classrooms in my classes, and I'm an MCP mentor as well. And tonight I am joined by Stephanie Howell, and we're going to be talking about goal setting, which I'm really interested in this topic because it's not something that I think that I do very well with my students. So I'm excited to learn, actually. And listen, Stephanie is an instructional technology coach at Pickerington Local School District in Ohio and also a distinguished Modern Classrooms educator and MCP mentor as well. So welcome, Stephanie. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about goal setting as well. Yeah, like I said, I'm really excited too. And you have shared, like, a plethora of resources and things that I'll be linking in the show notes. So I definitely recommend for our listeners to go and check out the show notes for this episode just to see some of those. We'll get into them later, of course, but that's very exciting. Before we do, Stephanie, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself? Tell us who you are and what you do, what you teach, and how you started your Modern Classrooms journey. Yeah, so I'm an instructional technology coach, so that means I work with multiple different teachers. I'm with grades fifth grade through 8th grade, that kind of grade band. So that's like our middle school. And so it's it's fun working with different teachers because you have all these different skill levels, kind of like our students. But what I really like about Modern Classrooms is during COVID I found out about them by listening to the Pedagogy podcast. And so I was listening to that episode, and we were doing some blended learning in our district, but there were just different pieces that I felt like were missing. So some of those pieces were kind of like executive functioning skills, the goal setting. We had self pacing going on in our classrooms. We had some instructional videos happening, but the students, it seemed like we would put an instructional video out there, but they wouldn't pause or rewind or complete guided notes. And then they were kind of lacking with just some of those skill pieces that Modern Classroom really offers to educators. And when I was listening to the podcast, I was like, okay, I have to do the free course. So then I did the free course, and I really liked the model started helping other teachers start to implement some of the pieces into their own classroom and got to see, okay, yes, we can't just do a video. We need to do guided notes with it. We need to teach students how to watch the video that's like where the executive functioning piece kind of comes into play. And then we need to kind of do some goal setting as well to help students become advocates of their own learning. Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, I still to this day, I see students sort of like they put the video on and then they start talking to their friend about something and they're like, well, I'm watching the video. And it's like, yeah, that's not how you learn from an instructional video, though. And you're not going to get the points that I'm trying to make, especially the detailed stuff. And so that's a great point and I hadn't thought about goal setting in that context. And the executive functioning piece, of course, I do think about. But I like the idea of goal setting in terms of how we learn and learning to learn. Since I've been on these past few episodes, we've been on this metacognitive reflective kick and I feel like this really fits in with that and I guess we'll talk about that later. But anyway, I want to start this discussion about goal setting by sort of framing what we mean when we say goal setting. Like I said, you shared a bunch of resources with me and I was looking through them and before I did that, my initial thought around goal setting was like helping students to set kind of data based goals for themselves. We have progress tracker, right? So goals like by Friday I'm going to finish three lessons or I'm going to raise my grade by such and such number of points or something like that. Like very sort of like hard and fast data based goals. But your resource had a quote in it that kind of opened my eyes to the idea of goal setting as being more sort of like academic learning based goals, not quite so cut and dry. And that was really interesting to me. So I would like to sort of frame the overall topic by first sort of setting the goalposts here and defining what we mean when we say goal setting. Can you elaborate kind of on that a little bit? Yeah. So I'll go ahead and kind of read the quote that was in the presentation that I shared. It's kind of like why goal setting? And so it talks about effective teachers and how they set and communicate clear lesson goals to help students understand the success criteria, commit to the learning, and provide the appropriate mix of success and challenge while emerging teachers set learning goals using students prior knowledge and students assessment data. The ultimate goal is to have students regularly set their own learning goals, self reflect and evaluate. And so because I'm an instructional coach, I get to go into a lot of different classrooms and you see all these different versions of goal setting, I would say, as I'm kind of walking in and in Ohio, we use an Ohio valuation system for teachers and goal setting is in the evaluation. And it's kind of interesting to see how from skilled to accomplish, how teachers can kind of little things they can do to move from skilled to accomplish. And what I kind of notice is teachers that are just starting off with blended learning or personalized learning or modern classrooms using that kind of model is when it comes to goals, that's where a lot of teachers lack and it can really help motivate our students, I think, when we do set effective goals. So there's different things that you could do. You could do like the smart goals, where you have goals that are very well defined. They're measurable, they're achievable, realistic and maybe timely and having all of those different components. But what I normally see is kind of some teachers you have to model. And I think that's one thing that I really learned from modern classrooms through seeing some of these, like, unit zero lesson plans as I was mentoring teachers when they would submit their unit zero, it kind of got me thinking that unit zero is this unit where you teach your students your procedures. And I was thinking, do we teach our students how to set goals? And some teachers do, some teachers don't. And so I kind of see sometimes teachers are writing the lesson goals for their students where other teachers, where students are more engaged in their learning, are starting to set their own goals and self reflect, evaluate, and then they're able to kind of decide, okay, was that a good goal or am I behind pace? Am I ahead of Pace? And typically, teachers that have students that are regularly setting their own goals, a lot of those students are on pace or ahead of pace, where in classrooms where I don't see that goal setting aspect, a lot of students are behind pace. And I think that's very motivating for a lot of students to set goals when it does come to maybe using a game board and really trying to make sure that, hey, today I'm going to try to get to number seven or activity number whatever activity it is, to just kind of help motivate them and work towards that. But again, it kind of is scaffold when I see it best done in different classrooms where the teacher might model first and then she's slowly letting the students take over control to where at the middle or end of the year, the students are really starting to own their own goals. Yeah, okay, there's a lot here. And this is really interesting to me, I think. What's interesting that's standing out to me right now, listening to you as you're talking, you have the perspective of an instructional coach. Like, you're actually looking at sort of the effectiveness of the teacher in Scaffolding. That right. And I was thinking from more from the perspective of the students themselves, but as the teacher, like, what do I do? So can you describe what those highly effective teachers are doing to scaffold that? And like you said, I'm sure that there's more support towards the beginning of the year. And then as the year moves on, there's that gradual release of responsibility as students can start to set their own goals. But what does that look like? What is the highly effective teacher doing to Scaffold? Especially at the beginning, but as they release responsibility as well. Yeah, and so what we're kind of doing with the modern questions model is we call our game boards kind of like roadmaps. Again, it's kind of just vocabulary. But what we like to do with those roadmaps is every single square that is on that game board or the roadmap has like a number. And we've learned that adding numbers to those roadmaps really make it easy for students to start to self evaluate and go, okay, I need help with number two. It kind of creates that common language. It really does. I've mentioned this with my mentees as well. When you just put the numbers on it, it makes a complete change. It's obvious that they're in order, but when you number them, everything becomes clear. It's really strange how that works. I 100% agree. Yeah, it is very strange. Just that one little thing. And I didn't even think about doing that until I became a mentor. And so if you are wanting to continue to grow, I would highly suggest becoming a mentor because you learn from all of your mentees. Like, one of my mentees did it and I was like, what? I was missing that and I had a conversation with her and I was like, okay, I've got to start telling my teachers to start implementing that too. So again, if you are thinking about becoming a mentor, you need to just do it because you learned so much from the people that you mentor. Definitely. So back to the roadmap. Once you have it laid out and the numbers again, help. What we started to do at the beginning is teachers created like a today's progress slide and it has today's goal and it has the number that every student should try to get to. So it's kind of that soft deadline and it's like, okay, today your goal is number seven. Today your goal is number six. And it just helps the students to know, okay, I want to get ahead of pace today, so I'm going to try to make my goal number eight. Where another student is like, I can just handle getting on pace today where another student who might have been absent might just say, okay, my goal is to get to this many squares and I'm going to try to get to seven, but I might need a little bit of help with that. And then the teacher can kind of, again, there's modeling by saying, this is what is expected for you to try to get to today to be considered on pace. And then we use a lot of the do nows, which was one of the templates provided by Modern Classroom. I don't know who was the original creator, but it's just, what are we working on today? And then they actually plan on what they're going to accomplish. So they fill out those two boxes and the teacher is able to kind of say, okay, let's see if we can meet those requirements. And then the teacher is able to help those students that might need additional assistance as needed. Got it. Yeah. And that makes sense. Starting off the year saying that your goal is less than seven or whatever the case may be, it gives the students the idea of setting a goal in the first place, of having a goal for today, of saying, I want to get to this goal. And you're right. It probably also motivates them to be like, well, I could probably get to eight today, right? Yeah. Which is also great. And I think too, I often see some kids, they're like, I'm going to finish this whole game board in one day. And it's like, no, we're going to chunk it for you. And so chunking it for the kids also makes it feel less overwhelming. You're kind of creating that psychologically safe environment for them by saying your goal is just to get to here today. Right. You don't have to do the whole entire thing today. Yeah. Which is very overwhelming for a lot of kids. And when I'm first co teaching a roadmap with one of my teachers, that's the first thing I say to my students. I'm like, you are not going to complete this whole thing today. It is for a week or two weeks or however long we mapped it out to be. And that right there, I think, helps the students say, okay, the teacher wants me to get to step three today. I can do that. Okay. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think that that answers my question about the scaffolding. And then I guess as you go along, you can you can stop doing that. Right. You can still ask the student, like, what's your goal for today? But not give them a target as they set the goals for themselves, right? Yeah. And then the students are able to start setting those goals and you're kind of able to check in with them as needed. But again, it's just kind of that modeling first to show them how to chunk up, but teaching them that executive functioning skill of chunking up that roadmap can really help them and then saying, okay, now you what do you think you should get to today? And then you're able to start that conversation where they're starting to take over. Right? I mean, that's the reflective and metacognitive part. Right. I think you said something about psychological safety, and that made me think again of the numbers, like putting the numbers on the thing, because it gives a sense of progression and also it gives a sense of how far we have to go, you know? So it's like I need to finish seven total lessons by next Friday, and today I'm working on lesson two. And just like, it's like a fraction. Like you have this sense of how far into the thing you are and it it's okay to not do all of it today because you have all of next week. Right, yeah. And it just helps them build that self awareness, I think, too, when they go, okay, I can do that. And instead of saying, oh, here's the whole thing, you figure it out. And then I think kids just get overwhelmed and they don't even start. Yeah, totally. I've seen that happen a lot because I'm at the end of a big unit. I do big long Projects and so I'm at the end of one and I have a couple of kids who are unlike lesson two out of eleven. Right. And they're super demotivated now because they're like, I can never possibly catch up. And I'm like, we got to do one at a time. Right? Yeah. I never thought about that really in terms of goal setting. But it is goal setting. It's like your goal for today is lesson two and you're behind, but it's okay. Your goal is lesson two. If you do lesson two, you can go on to three. I really like that and I think because we're talking about I know we're getting off topic, but we're talking about psychological safety. But what I think is really important there is one of my teachers, she has like a full inclusion class. So half of her class is special education. And what she has done is the last 20 minutes of her time is any student that's not at number seven, she'll pull up to a small group and every single student that first roadmap that they do is on pace. Because again, you want the students to hear that I'm on pace. Right. Because as soon as they hear they're behind, that psychological safety, I really believe, can hinder some of the students. And so I just love what she has done there. The other students are doing some extension activities, but the other students that are not quite there have 20 minutes to work with her to get there. And she's building their confidence up by helping them get there as well. That's awesome. I mean, you're making me realize, okay, we're getting a little off topic of the specifics of the question, but it does all relate to goal setting. If the teacher says that a certain lesson is on pace, we are implicitly setting a goal even if we're not specifically stating it is a goal. Right. And so to be able to say like, actually, today your on pace lesson is different from whatever the other classes that you're right. In terms of psychological safety and in terms of goal setting. Right. It's like, let's reframe this. You can set a goal for yourself and not have to worry about comparing yourself to the rest of the class right now so that you can feel like you can actually achieve this. That's really awesome. I really, really like that. Yeah. And I think too, we kind of make the goals maybe more achievable. It's super easy to achieve when we first introduce a roadmap because we want the students to feel that success. Just hearing, hey, you're ahead of pace today, kids just smile. They get excited hearing that no one wants to be behind pace. Right. I don't want to be behind pace in my life. Right, totally. Okay. I want to go back to another thing that occurred to me when I asked you this first question, which was that you made the connection between goal setting and like, lesson objectives, which I never made that connection myself. But teachers are very used to writing lesson objectives. It's a very common thing in the world of talking about teaching and teaching and learning and stuff. Right. So that's what made me think about goal setting. Not as saying I'm going to complete four lessons by whatever date, but like, I am going to learn how to do something that kind of more amorphous, kind of more abstract type of goal setting. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. So a lot of times, maybe it's writing, for example, breaking it up. Because typically we will put that all on kind of one big game board. That might take two or three weeks, but when students are going through it, it might say, okay, my goal today is to get my body paragraph done. Or My goal today is to fix my transitions. They're able to kind of focus on that learning objective where they're taking that big end goal, but breaking it into smaller goals to really kind of focus on what is that learning target, what am I working on and what do I want to focus on today? And I think when teachers are using maybe formative assessment data or working with different students, the modern classroom Project really allows for teachers to conference with kids. I mean, that's the great thing about the model, right? And so when they're looking at the different targets, they can pull small groups of students, like every student that might be working on their thesis statement as their learning target for that day, that's your small group. Every student that might be working on your body, that might be a different small group because it really does allow students to self pace once they get going. Okay, I see that I see that almost as like one level of abstraction beyond saying, I'm going to complete lesson four today because maybe lesson four is the body paragraph. Right. But I like that because it takes the numbered lessons in the unit and it takes the progress tracker and it actually makes it into a scaffold for more academic goal setting. That's actually really cool. Yeah. And it might not happen right away. Like, that kind of goal setting, I would say takes a little bit. Right. First they kind of just focus on, okay, my goal is to get the number seven and then you can start kind of implementing, okay, well, what is that number seven or what is the focus that we're focusing on for this chunk of today's learning? And then you're able to have that conversation with your students. Totally. And it made me also think of in the Modern Classrooms training, we also talk a lot about in the Mastery Check Module, we talk a lot about criteria for mastery. Right. And how will you, the student and me, the teacher, be able to determine that this work demonstrates mastery? And I think that's also a sort of goal in that sense. Right. Like in the case of my class, my drumbeat will have a bass drum on beat one and a snare drum on beats two and four. That's my goal. But I also want to add other things to make it unique and make it my own drumbeat. So it's like a guiding sort of, I guess, goal. Right. It's sort of a guiding criterion that you're working towards as you're actually doing the work. And it's stated in terms of the work as opposed to being stated in terms of I'm going to complete lesson four. Yeah, cool. What about more long term goal setting? Like beyond the scope of a single week or the scope of a single unit, even maybe like an entire semester or school year? Can you talk a little bit about goal setting and how these sort of ideas around goal setting play out over longer time frames like that? Yeah, I think when it comes to longer goals, really using that framework of the smart goals where students are starting to kind of look over what do I want to achieve for this quarter or this semester? And kind of deciding based on that and looking over maybe some other data. This is like when we kind of use maybe our diagnostic data, which we use already for our diagnostic kind of assessments. So students might conference with a teacher, they look over that data, and then they might create some type of smart goal based on that, of what they want to improve on. Okay, so what might that look like? Okay, a lot of things. How do you scaffold that? Is there like a worksheet or something that they do how do students state those goals and then do they continue to check back in on them as the quarter goes on? Can you talk more about what the students do as that goes along? Yeah, so I have like a Google slide that some of my teachers will use, and first they're just kind of outlining their goal. What do they maybe want to focus on when we do that? Already assessments. It will print out a nice report that kind of shows the different domains that students are struggling with. Depending on the subject and looking over that data, students can kind of say, okay, I need to work on fractions or I need to work on informational text. And then based on that, you want to make sure that it's measurable. How big do they want to close that gap? Or do they want to maybe do five lessons a week? So kind of setting like a number to what they want to measure so that way it can be measurable. And then that a and the smart is achievable. So can they even reach the goal? And talking that's like, where the teacher conference comes into play, I think, and just kind of thinking about, okay, you have this big goal. Can we do it? Can we break it up into little chunks so that way you are able to reach that end goal of 30 lessons or having you focus on your math backs or whatever it is, and then is it realistic? So does it make sense? Can you do it in that given time frame? Do you have resources that are available to you and then is it timely? So when are we going to start? Are we able to finish it by the state? And then putting all those pieces together and creating that end goal for the students is one way that a lot of my teachers will kind of go through, setting up goals by using that framework. Got it. Yeah, I like that framework. I'm curious to hear you talk more about the realistic aspect, because I have students that they will do poorly on an entire unit, right. And then be like, for next unit, I'm going to finish all the lessons and be on pace the whole time, and I want to be like, yes, that should be your goal, but you really struggled this unit, and I don't want you to set yourself up for disappointment. How do you have that conversation? I guess, how do your teachers have that conversation with students about goals that are realistic and not just like, I want to achieve everything and students don't realize how much work that is, right. How much of a struggle that's going to be. How does that conversation go? Yeah, I think sometimes making the connection to what that student is interested in. So if it's basketball, because I think sometimes they're unable to see what step there might be missing when it comes to that realistic and achievable piece. So if they're into basketball, it's like, can you do this many free throws a day or whatever it is, and just kind of relating it to something that they are familiar with? I think to help the conversation, I think to kind of showing them different ways that, okay, here's your big goal. Let's take it down a step. My husband is a Project manager, so when you're looking at a whole Project, he has to kind of split it up into chunks, right? Like, okay, this might be your end goal for the end of the year, but we have to do this piece before we can do that. So maybe it is like you want to learn long division? Well, if you don't know your multiplication facts, we've got to start there before you can do your division facts and then get to long division. Got it. So kind of showing students, like, the progression of different skill levels that they might need, that's cool because it also sort of like ties in the scope and sequence of your class, too. Again, it scaffolds the goal setting for them. You've written in the notes that you also have students set career goals, which is a much longer term than I was expecting, especially for middle school students. I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about that. What do students say and then in terms of their career goals and then how does that guide them as they move throughout the year? Do they remember that? Do they check back in on it and say, like, yeah, I'm still working towards becoming a doctor or whatever. How does that go? Yeah, so when it comes to careers, we start that in the spring and 6th grade. So they start pretty young in our district, that is young. Yeah. So they kind of start in 6th grade, just exploring different careers. But a lot of times the counselors will work with the students and kind of setting those goals on just, okay, what is your goal for when you leave school? And just starting to think about that and how they're going to get focused on graduation and if there's any volunteer work that they need to start doing or any type of work like that can really start to help those students when they have that goal set in ready. And for them, we have a program, it's called Naviance. So it goes into that system and then the students are able to review that every single year. In middle school, they don't check it as often, but in high school they start to check it regularly because they have to log in and add other pieces to their kind of portfolio. Yeah, see, I wanted to ask you that because I feel like checking back in on the goal is a really important part, especially with these long term goals. Like I said, I'll have students right in there. This is not explicit goal setting. Like I said, I don't actually really do this very well. And so I'm learning, right? And I'm going to try copying some of these things. But I have students, students do a final reflection after every unit. And I always ask, what went well? What could you have done better? And those kinds of questions. And students always say, not all students, but there are always students who say, I wish that I had stayed on pace. I wish I hadn't gotten distracted. I wish that I had finished one lesson per day or things like that. And it's like those get typed into the document and then they do it the exact same thing again, the next unit. And so I feel like having a routine or a system for checking back in on your goals and keeping yourself accountable and also maybe having your teacher keep you accountable is important. Yeah. And I was actually one of my teachers. They were in a parent teacher conference, okay? And this dad gave them this quote and they wrote it down because they were so inspired by it. And then they shared it with everybody. It says, Kids don't do what you expect. They do what you inspect. And I just love that quote so much. And this is a dad that shared this with these teachers. And when they got to thinking about it, they really were like, well, if we're not checking in or we're not conferencing with students, they're not going to do it. Right? And it's the same with me. Like, if I do a course that's online and I know that the instructor is not going to be checking over my work, I might have to do it when I know I can do a lot better, right? Totally. But if I am being inspected by my work, I am going to go over and above because I know somebody's looking at it where if nobody is looking at it and I might just be doing it on my own or maybe I have an instructor that's not checking it like somebody else, I am going to have to do it. And so when I heard that quote, it got me kind of thinking about goal setting as well. Like, if we're not checking in on the progress of our students and we're not inspecting them and doing check ins with them on their goals, it's going to be forgotten about. Yeah, same thing with our teachers in Ohio. We have to set two professional goals every single year. And when I was a teacher, nobody checked on them until the end of the year. I couldn't even tell you what my goals were because no one was inspecting me, right. But if somebody was checking in on me so sometimes we'll use a progress type tracker. We'll use it throughout the roadmap or the game board where it kind of says, like, students are working or they finished or they need checked, but also using that kind of idea, that progress. Checker but for the teacher where she will list out or he will list out every single name of all their students and just maybe quarter one. Here's the student's goal. Have I checked in with them? Yes. No. And then throughout the entire month, you hopefully you're able to check in with your students twice or three times to see their progress on it and asking them, okay, what evidence do you have that you're working on this? Are you practicing your multiplication facts? Are you reading ten minutes a day and asking them questions about their books? But if we're not inspecting it, I don't think students are going to do it 100%. I love that. I love the idea of having a routine as the teacher for checking back in on the goals. Yeah. And I learned for myself if I don't write it down, every educator in my district has professional goals. So I have a spreadsheet and all the teachers that I'm working on with like a coaching cycle with I'll put their name, what the goal is for that coaching cycle, what their professional goals are. Usually they're aligned and then have I followed up with those teachers? Have I coat with them? Have they done what they said they were going to do? Because we all need that accountability person, and it's been a lot better since doing that, and I've seen a lot more improvement because now they are held accountable. And when you're held accountable, you're most likely like, okay, I've got to do it. Yeah, totally. So do your teachers where do your teachers students write their goals down? How do they do that? How do they check back in on those? What they do is they will just kind of type their goal in like a Google Doc or something like that, and then the teacher will conference with them. Some teachers just use paper where the students will write it down. Others have them type it up in a Google form and use autocrat to kind of do some magic where it will pop out a document. Some teachers have even used. I don't know if you're familiar with this add on docker pender. I'm not, but I will put it in the show notes and check it out. And so what it does is it goes along with a Google form, and once you get it all set up, it has all your students name, and the students just pick their name. And then the next question, you can add whatever question you want, but it creates like a table. And so every time the student fills out that Google form for their evidence of their goals, it adds like a table line, depending on what view you create. And so some teachers will use that. It kind of depends on their tech and their comfortability level when it does come to that. Where some teachers, again, are paper pencil. Others will maybe use that Google form with docker pender. And then other teachers have, like, a data binder where they're collecting all of their goals for their students as well. And then they're able to put, like, the learner profile in there, and then they can conference with the student, and all that information is in one place. Cool. Okay, I guess the takeaway here is have your students set goals and hold them accountable. Remind them of their goals, whether you do it on paper, whether they do it on a form, whether you do it whatever. Yeah, you mentioned autocrat, too. I mean, that's a cool idea. Like having it autogenerate, a document that just shows every student's name and their goal. Very cool. That's a very, very cool idea and a really good point about keeping them accountable and inspecting them through their goals, seeing how they're doing. Wow. Okay, listeners, we're going to take a very quick break. When we come back, we are going to talk a little bit more about goal settings. Hey, listeners, it's Tony Rose here with some announcements and reminders. If you and or your teacher bestie are interested in the virtual mentorship program, we do have scholarships available. Make sure to check out Modern Classrooms.org scholarships. We have regional scholarships available for educators in Baltimore City, New York City, DC. Chicago, Tulsa County, and the Twin Cities that include full tuition, a year of implementation support, and a $500 stipend for finishing the program. We are continuing our scholarship across the state of Indiana, which includes implementation support and 30 PGPs. Any educator in the state can enroll right now@modernclassrooms.org, Indiana. We also have partnerships with districts across the country who are paying for educators to go through our training. As for professional learning, make sure to check out our webinars page on Modern Classrooms.org webinars and to connect with our community. Join our Twitter chat on the first Wednesday of the month and our virtual meet up on the second Wednesday of the month, and we hope to connect with you outside of our podcast. All right, folks, we are back with Stephanie, and we're going to keep talking about goal setting and scaffolding that goal setting with our students. So my next question for you, Stephanie, is about scaffolding, but kind of specifically, I want to talk about how we teach students to look at progress indicators, like how to look at the data that a modern classroom definitely gives us, specifically in the form of the progress tracker. Right. But other data as well, and how to look at that data to set their goals. Like, what measurements do we teach our students to use as they're setting goals for themselves and also to determine whether they've met their goals? You know, like, I feel like it's often something kind of inauthentic when we just ask our students to, like, set a goal for yourself. So how can we frame the growth that comes from goal setting and striving toward a specific goal by teaching students to look at indicators and actually understand that this is real, this is what's actually happening. And I want to make a decision based on that data. Can you talk about how you would scaffold that kind of thinking with students or how your teachers would yeah, so one way that I like to do this is with game based learning. I feel like any time you can make it a game, students are already bought in and their engagement level goes up. Yes. And so one of the ways that we do this is it's called Fast and Curious, and it's an Edgy protocol. I don't know if you're familiar with protocols. I know that book. Yeah. Oh, perfect. Yeah, it's a book. There's a couple of books out there. Fast and Curious is a really great protocol to start with for goal setting. And so what happens is you can use a chalkboard, you can have a Google slide, a whiteboard, it doesn't matter. But every single day for a week. So I just make like a table and I put Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday on that table. And what the students do is they get a quizzes Cahoot game kit. It really doesn't matter what platform you choose. They get one of those platforms with like, vocabulary, math, facts, whatever skill you are working on. A lot of times my teachers use it for vocabulary. And on Monday, you don't teach the vocabulary words. On Monday, the kids do the fast and curious activity. And let's say they score like 20% as a class. You can also do this individual so then they can look at their individual report and they can write their percentage down for Monday. So maybe individually the student did 10%, but as a class it was 20%. They do the same test on Tuesday and their score should go up. So they should go up just like a little bit, maybe, because it's still at the beginning of the week, where now instead of 20% as a class, it might be 30, and instead of 10%, it might be 15 for that student. And what the students can see right away is kind of, if I work towards this, that growth mindset of their scores going up and that retrieval practice of kind of practicing and repeating and redoing again and again and again. And then the students kind of buy into goal setting. We did this with a group of students last year very regularly. So every single week they had a new Fast and Curious. They did the class average, and then they also did their individual average every single week. And so when Christmas break came ready for January, we started to really see improvements in these students goal setting because they were starting to understand that fixed mindset to growth mindset, first off. And then they got so obsessed that like, anytime they would take, like, an Edgy elastic assessment or mastery check or formative assessment, didn't really matter what it was, these kids would kind of see their pretest, and then they would set a score for hire after the assessment. So some of my teachers will, before they start that game board, they'll do a preassessment over the unit just to kind of see, okay, what do you know? And then the kids will take that data, and they'll look at their reports, and we use edge elastic in our district. And when they look over those reports, it's very detailed for them. They can see the questions that they missed. They can kind of see really quickly the red and the green, and then they're able to make, okay, I want to get this score by the end, and this is what I'm going to do to get there. And then they can conference with the teacher in order to do that. But I think for that group of kids and I think it's true for a lot of kids is that game base of that fast and curious really helped them see. Okay, on Monday, I scored this, but after a lot of practice and reteaching and all these different things that I was doing throughout the week, I now got my score up to a 90 or 100%. Yeah, okay. This is awesome, right? Because it definitely feels authentic. Like, when you're playing a game that you want to get a higher score, like, I feel like that's that's something, like, inherent in anybody that plays any game, right? Of course you want that. And then the teacher can come in and give the student sort of, like, the framework for thinking about setting that goal in a more structured kind of a way. So, again, you're scaffolding the goal setting, not the actual gameplay, right? And then they can develop, I guess, the vocabulary, but, like, the framework, the patterns of thought to think about how to actually set those goals and to see the numbers going up in terms of having set the goal. That's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah. And what's really awesome about it, too, is since you're doing the class average as well, the teacher can kind of model out loud different things that you might think about when you're setting a goal, like, okay, today we got this. I think tomorrow we can do 5% better, or whatever and just kind of talking that out or, hey, we're really missing this question. Let's do a fair model to work on that and just providing those students that kind of modeling as a class. And then if you teach multiple classes, you're able to take that class average and compete against all of your classes. And so then the students can start to compete against class two, class three, and then you can have an overall winner as well. So there's a couple of different ways that you can kind of compete against each other individually as a class and then over every single class. Two. Totally. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love that. I always love gamifying things, and I really do feel like it definitely scaffolds the learning to set goals by looking at indicators. That's really cool. Okay, so here's my next question for you. And I mentioned before that all the past episodes that I've been on for the past, like, three or four episodes of this podcast that I've been on, we've talked about metacognition and reflection and that kind of stuff. And so I'm curious to hear, in terms of goal setting, how you encourage your students or how you encourage your teachers to encourage their students to incorporate their sort of prior actions and their prior experiences into their goal setting. I guess we talked about this a little bit in terms of setting those realistic goals, right? But how do your teachers have their students reflect on what they have done in order to set realistic goals? How are they connected? Yeah, I think too, a lot of times we miss celebrating student success. Right? We're always like, okay, what's the next unit? And so really, taking the time to celebrate where a student has come from, I think is really important anytime you can do that. And so looking over their kind of data and celebrating that, a lot of my teachers will have some type of data binder where I kind of shared in the show notes, this data binder that is created in Google Sheets. And what it does is it can start to collect your students data from throughout the year. Or if you have other teachers on board, you might be able to kind of vertically use it as well, where students in fourth grade, fifth grade, and so on are using this profile, and they're able to kind of see all of the different progress that they've made. So in that data binder, there's some graphs that we'll calculate, and then you're able to kind of celebrate that with your students. There's also just like a learner profile where students are able to go in and they're able to kind of say, okay, I work best by doing this, or These are the strategies that work for me. Or, this teacher that I worked with last year use this strategy, and I was really successful with it. And so students are able to start kind of seeing patterns and different things that have really helped them in the past, but then they're also able to kind of start to create this portfolio where they're able to see, okay, this was something that was very difficult for me, and now I'm able to do it. But again, I think it's keeping a journal or some type of evidence of learning that the students have done that and then celebrating them. Whether it's like a cereal party where you get their favorite cereal and they celebrate that way, or extra recess or whatever that student is motivated by, or whatever you kind of set with that student. But a lot of times I don't see that celebration piece because we're always on to the next thing. Yeah, I remember having this discussion a couple of years ago with Lydia and what they were saying was that it's really easy to fall into the mindset of like, well, reflection and metacognition are all about seeing what we did wrong and trying to fix mistakes. But we can also look back and say, this went really well, it was challenging what I grew and celebrate, like you say, I really like that. I appreciate you looking at it and framing it that way because I think it's the positive way to look at this. How does that then play into their goal setting? Like, how do they then take that and say, well, this was challenging. So for the next unit, I'm expecting a challenge as well. Is there a connection there? Yeah, I think too, kind of when you are able to scaffold out a goal for a student and kind of show them, hey, we scaffold this out, what do you think we need to do for this goal? And how do you think we need to get to it? And kind of just reminding them like, remember we had to do this and this and this and you're able to accomplish it. And so when it does get hard, you can go back to that celebration and remind them like, hey, long division was very difficult, but we were able to get there and you're able to now do this piece of the next step. And so, again, just kind of going back and celebrating and showing students their success and maybe even, hey, you really were in this pit when it came to that learning goal, but now you were able to get yourself out of it. And just a reminder that this is what we might need to do in order to get ahead in this goal. Got it? Yeah. I'm really liking this focus on returning to the goals. Not just setting the goals, but returning to the goals. We talked about this before the break in terms of the accountability piece and the students will do what's inspected. Right? I really like that because it makes the goal. It's not just setting a goal. It's not just setting a goal. It's living your goal. Right. Maybe reevaluating your goal if it's too hard, if you set too high of a goal or something, or maybe you didn't set a high enough goal for yourself. I like this idea of continually coming back to the goal and making that a part of the routine of, I guess of a modern classroom, but just of the class. I'm going to be thinking a lot about that and ways that I can build those checkpoints in with goals that students had previously set because I do have them reflect, but I don't have them look back at their reflections, like as a portfolio or a journal. And I think that that's a really good way to emphasize to them that they have that desire right. Like, that came from them. It's just that they forget until the next time that we reflect. But then by then it's too late because we're already reflecting on something we already did. So yeah, I'm really liking that emphasis on on returning to the goals. Yeah, it's really helped when we've kind of said, okay, let's look at our portfolio and see how did it go and what do you need to do next? Yeah, so I guess obviously a related question is my next question for you. This is also a trickier question, I think, but what happens when a student does not meet a goal? Like, when they have set a goal and they fail to meet it? What does that conversation look like? I guess we can reevaluate our goals, but maybe we get to the end of a unit and something went wrong. How do we, I guess, reflect on that? And also how do we move on from there? What does that conversation look like when a student does not meet a goal that they've set for themselves? Yeah, I think a lot of times it's kind of talking with the students and supporting them and also just kind of saying, like, it's okay, where do you think we went wrong with setting our goal? And a lot of times it's probably was it even achievable or talking about the student, okay, we said this was achievable, but let's maybe bring it down maybe two or three notches, really reflecting on that goal and helping them develop a new plan for their next quarter and then providing that support. So when you're creating that action plan, do they need more check in? So maybe with the rest of the class, you provide three check in dates throughout the month, but with this student, you're going to do once a week or you're going to do twice a week just to kind of see what they need. Are you going to monitor their progress more? Are you going to help them in seeing that maybe you do maybe shorter dates where they're checking in more often, or you're taking that big goal and kind of creating some small goals for them throughout. Like, okay, this. Week, I want you to focus on this. And then next week, we're going to create another goal to get to that bigger goal and then celebrating with them so as they are completing those different pieces of that goal, celebrating alongside with them, and then adjusting as may be needed. But I think, again, it's that inspection piece that is really important when it comes to not meeting those goals. And so every student might need a different amount of check in and support when it comes to that. Got it. Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense. Like constantly reevaluating and I guess relationships are going to be really important here too, right? Yeah, like helping students to not feel like they're being yelled at by their teacher because they didn't meet their goals. Like making it an authentic and human process too. Yeah. Well, that's great, man. This has been fantastic. I love hosting these episodes. I always edit the podcast, but I love hosting them because I always write the outline and then the guest comes on and completely reframes my thinking on it based on how I had originally thought about it. And I really like this idea of moving from goal setting to just living a life of having goals, you know what I mean? Like the ongoing checking back in on my goals, revising them if I know I'm not going to make it. Things like that. Continually checking in on my goals, not just setting them because just setting them is not enough. I'm really thinking hard on that and how I'm going to implement that in my class. Things are going to change and my students are going to be like, what's this? And I'm going to be like, yeah, it's new. So I guess to close us out, this is one of Tony Rose's favorite questions and I think it's particularly appropriate here. What goals do you have for the future? Yeah, right now I am on maternity leave. I just had my newborn a couple of weeks ago. Congratulations. Thank you. And so right now with my older son who's three, it's potty training. So I'm home, I am ready, and I'm no longer overly pregnant and feeling exhausted. So that's the new goal that I am tackling on for him. And lots of rewards and celebration and reviewing progress along the way. You have a progress tracker for the potty training. I love that. Yeah, it's been a week. I bet. Wow. Well, thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Stephanie, how can our listeners connect with you if they want to and ask you more about goal setting? Yeah, the best way to reach out is probably on Twitter. Feel free to message me and ask for any of the resources that I talked about or if you have any other questions, happy to connect and talk alongside of you. My Twitter handle is @mrshowell24. You can also email me at Stephanie@mrshowell24. And again, I love connecting with educators, so if you have questions or need support, let me know. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And I'll also be linking of what you shared. I'll be linking it in the show notes so there's plenty to look at down on the show notes for this episode. Thank you again, Stephanie. This has been fantastic. Thank you for joining me. Yeah, thank you so much listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org and you can find the show notes, which I mentioned are jam packed for this episode at podcast modernclassrooms.org 123 we'll have this episode. The recap and transcript uploaded to the modern classrooms blog on Friday, so be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. And of course, thank you all for listening. Have a great week and we will be back next Sunday.


Participant #1:
Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our Show Notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modern class PROJ that's PR OJ. We are so appreciative of all you do for students and schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast.