One of my goals for this year is to ensure that all of my students have numerous opportunities to celebrate who they are and to experience success in all areas of their learning.  In order to do this effectively, and in order for this to become a smart goal I need to have a deep understanding of who my students are and what influences their lives.  I gained some knowledge of who my students were from a range of factors within the first week: results from last year, poems where they identify their wishes, dreams, and fears, ice breaker activities such as two truths and a lie, and conversations with both the students and their parents.  However, I felt that I still did not know who my students were and how I could help them achieve this success across all areas of their learning.

As we are likely going to have 1:1 devices within our class this year I thought that it would be a good idea to introduce the idea of video diaries/working with web 2.0 technologies to my students.  Each child was provided with some time to brainstorm who they are and to discuss goals with their friends - the only restraints on these goals were that they had to be smart goals and that they had to have a goal that related to school and a goal that related to their personal lives/home.  The students quickly came up with goals that reflected who they are and their priorities, both within the school environment and within their home.  We then videoed the students recording their goals to make them accountable to these, have made an iMovie out of them and will be sharing them on our class weekly.  I have one student who still needs to complete this and then will be posting this up on our class blog - www.sarahssuperheroes.weebly.com

The fact that the student's set these goals before we worked on targets together was quite important to me as it allowed me to gain insight to where these students believed that they are in their learning/schooling without having any adult input/direction.  These goals will be evaluated during this term and the children will set some more goals - these will probably be more learning orientated as after two weeks I can already hear my student's making comments along the lines of areas in their writing and maths in which they believe that they can improve.  It is interesting to note, in reconsidering this, that we have been asked to do exactly this also - set our own goals and be prepared to discuss these and share how we can achieve these with our deputy and associate principals during specifically set aside release time towards the start of this term.

I am meeting with my tutor teacher this week to discuss my own goals and I am interested to see where my goals lie before and after my discussions with him - and how they reflect both my personal learning journey in regards to teaching and my professional learning and development and how these align with the school.  I am sure that the insight that I gain from this will be just as interesting as the insight that I gained when my students set their goals.