Student Goal Setting in the Classroom

Below is my response for Larry Ferlazzo’s Classroom Q & A for Education Week. You can view all of the responses by clicking here. Enjoy!

Used smartly and with intent, goal setting can be a game changer in engaging our students in their own learning process. Writing down goals makes them concrete. Sharing goals with peers, teachers, and family members puts more accountability on oneself. Including others in setting the goals provides a support system to help achieve them. Others become invested in their success. When students finally do achieve what they set out to accomplish, everyone celebrates.

So how can we use goal setting with our students? I believe the first step in this process is asking students what they are interested in as well as their needs. In one 2nd grade classroom, one teacher I know (my wife) asked her students questions regarding their interests and needs. One student, who in previous years had significant behavior issues, said he wanted to “build more because I like to tinker”. This information translated into co-developed goals between teacher and student around creativity and the importance of choice in learning. Over the course of the school year, both his behavior and academics improved dramatically. Both the process (choice) and the product (building things) were a part of this example of student-involved goal setting.

Including students in the goal setting process also benefits from making the learning process and eventual outcomes visible. By visible, this means documenting student learning as it is happening and sharing their work for a wide audience. Digital portfolios are an effective way for facilitating this approach. Going back to the previous example, my wife used FreshGrade to capture images and video of her students building during Genius Hour. Families could observe the idea generation, collaboration, prototyping, and collaboration that led to an exciting product as it was happening. By making visible a student’s pathway toward goal achievement, it takes the mystery out of the learning process and celebrates their work.



What is Metacognition? How Do We Teach It? An Education Week podcast and response

I recently participated in an Education Week/BAM Radio interview with Larry Ferlazzo, Teresa Diaz and Laura Robb. The topic for our short podcast was metacognition.


Click here to listen to the podcast, and read on for my written response on the topic of metacognition.

Metacognition is defined as “awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes”. Education leader Dr. Linda Darling Hammond describes metacognition more succinctly as “thinking about our own thinking”. The ability to be self-aware and to reflect upon our mental processes is a critical skill that should be taught and reinforced in schools today. When we are intentional about being metacognitive, we are more likely to clear up misconceptions, understand how we operate as a person, and make smarter decisions about the future. However, with how fast paced education seems to be considering all of the curriculum to teach and the standards to cover, teachers can feel overwhelmed to take even more time for this.

This should be a concern of teachers. Metacognition is important beyond the schoolhouse. Questioning and reflecting about our experiences is a cornerstone of becoming a lifelong learner. Consider the most recent presidential election and everything that led up to it. From what I read, most people who made public comments online about the race spoke in absolute terms: “Trump is a narcissist.” “Hillary is a liar.” I did not comment on how true these statements might be when I read them on social media. Yet I did wonder how informed each person who made the statements was about the issues. What types of questions might have been asked to help a person become more aware of what they were saying and why? Would the online conversation have led to moments of reflection? If the questions were not asked, was that the best decision? Critical thinking usually leads to smarter decisions.  

When we teach students to facilitate a deeper discourse about their lives using metacognition, we help make the world a better place. Insults are replaced with questions. Criticisms are couched in appreciative observations. People live their lives more informed and more open to the possibilities. As an educator, I cannot imagine better outcomes for our students.