The power of students setting goals and monitoring progress

In chapter three of Leaders of Their Own Learning, Ron Berger tells us that "Using data with students encompasses classroom practices that build students’ capacity to access, analyze, and use data effectively to reflect, set goals, and document growth." 

What does that mean exactly?  

Using data with students encompasses the following activities:

• Students use their classwork as a source for data, analyzing strengths, weaknesses, and patterns to improve their work.
• Students regularly analyze evidence of their own progress. They track their progress on assessments and assignments, analyze their errors for patterns, and describe what they see in the data about their current level of performance.
• Students use data to set goals and reflect on their progress over time and incorporate data analysis into student-led conferences.

Berger continues by elaborating. "Teachers and school leaders everywhere collect and analyze data to make informed decisions about instruction that will support all students in meeting state and Common Core standards. However, in many schools, the power of data to improve student achievement is not fully leveraged because students are left out of the process. The most powerful determinants of student growth are the mindsets and learning strategies that students themselves bring to their work—how much they care about working hard and learning, how convinced they are that hard work leads to growth, and how capably they have built strategies to focus, organize, remember, and navigate challenges. 

When students themselves identify, analyze, and use data from their learning, they become active agents in their own growth. They set personal goals informed by data they understand, and they own those goals. The framework of student-engaged assessment provides a range of opportunities to involve students in using data to improve their learning.  Using data with students has the potential to build reflective and confident learners with key dispositions of college and career readiness.

The below examples are how teachers in our system are doing just what Berger explains above.  The power and impact is amazing.

Students Reflecting and Setting Goals	Teacher Moves
	In this 2nd grade example, students created their own version of the Units of Study Opinion Writing Checklist with their teacher. Then, they looked at the opinion letter they had previously written, referred to the checklist and set goals to address what was missing or what they could get better at. In order for their goal to be more obvious and to keep the checklist visible, the teacher color coded each possible goal section for students to place their name and goal. This makes it easy for the teacher to see at a quick glance who is working on what component for a check-in on progress during a writing conference.
	This 2nd grade example stems from students reflecting on their most recent piece, comparing their piece to the Units of Study Opinion Writing Checklist, and identifying an area or 2 they want to focus more deliberately on for their next opinion letter.  As students work, they are able to refer to the checklist indicators to assess their progress toward improving in their identified area. The teacher is able to focus conferences around the students goal area, as well as differentiate small group instruction based on goal trends. The students are vested and have a high level of accountability in accomplishing their goal as they assess their writing, determine goals and monitor progress during the unit.
Opinion Writing Goal Setting (clean copy)	Students in this 4th grade class set a goal for improving their opinion essays. Students engaged in a discussion with partners where they explored these questions: Why is it important to set goals? What can having goals do for us? Then, they looked at their pre-assessment with boxes marked on the Units of Study Opinion Writing Checklist by their teacher.  It was explained to students that the marks on the checklist were based on what they should be able to do at the end of all the lessons in the unit. Then students looked at their writing and the checklist, they considered all the examples of good writing that had seen so far. Finally, they decided which goal they thought they could achieve by the end of the next essay.  As a class, they walked through each box on the Writing Goal Setting sheet and completed the boxes based on their reflections and thinking. As often as they can, they come back to this goal setting sheet and add to it so they can  hold themselves accountable for the goal.
	In writing, students use the Checklist that is in our Units of Study Curriculum. They choose something on the checklist that they are working on in their writing for the day. Then they write the goal on a post-it. This strategy makes it easy for the teacher to do a quick check as to who is working on what component. Also, it is easy to see who is working on the same thing, in order to group students based on goals to pull for conferencing. One teacher has even used this chart for building silent reading stamina.  As a class, they set a reading goal in minutes. Then they wrote down their starting and ending page number in their silent reading book to track pages read. This has increased stamina, and seems to keep them focused during silent reading.
Unit Assessment Reflection (clean copy)	This 4th grade goal setting session came about after the teacher noticed her students were particularly challenged at solving word problems.  Because the next unit provided a lot of additional practice solving word problems, she wanted students to focus on this during the unit.  At the conclusion of the previous unit, they talked about flaws and the importance of flaws in the learning process.  When student received their unit assessment back, they were asked to silently look through their assessment focusing on what they do well when solving word problems, primarily with the three identified statements, and complete the Unit Assessment Reflection.  They were also able to add their own thinking if there was an additional trait that they thought better described their work. Then, they found a problem that was answered incorrectly (they needed to write down the problem number so that the teacher could find the problem) and how they solved it.  They then had the opportunity to try to fix the flaw in their solution and identify if they could find the flaw as well as what type of flaw it was (discussed this previously as well). Finally, students were asked to create a goal for the duration of the unit and unit test