SMART..Fired Up... Ready to Learn.

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

adapted from SMART goals for ASCD

We will be writing SMART goals that you are expected to specifically relate to your backward plan.  We will be using the data from instructional practices to create a culture rich in positivity and action orientated results.  It will be our intent to have 100% commitment and work toward 80% fidelity.  THAT is how we will achieve result.

• Specific: Goals must be clear and unambiguous; vagaries and platitudes have no place in goal setting. When goals are specific, they tell you exactly what is expected, when, and how much. Because the goals are specific, you can easily measure progress toward completion.
• Measurable:What good is a goal that you can't measure? If your goals are not measurable, you never know whether you are making progress toward successful completion. Not only that, but it's tough to stay motivated to complete goals when they have no milestones to indicate their progress.
• Attainable: Goals must be realistic and attainable. The best goals require you and students to stretch a bit to achieve them, but they aren't extreme. That is, the goals are neither out of reach nor below standard performance. Goals that are set too high or too low become meaningless,.
• Relevant: Goals must be an important tool in the grand scheme of reaching the school vision and mission. You may have heard that 80 percent of worker productivity comes from only 20 percent of their activities. You can guess where the other 80 percent of work activity ends up! This relationship comes from Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto's 80/20 rule. This rule, which states that 80 percent of the wealth of most countries is held by only 20 of the population, has been applied to many other fields since its discovery. Relevant goals address the 20 percent of worker activities that has such a great impact on performance and brings your organization closer to its vision. (Source: Blanchard, Schewe, Nelson, & Hiam, Exploring the World of Business.)
• Time-bound: Goals must have starting points, ending points, and fixed durations. Commitment to deadlines helps to focus efforts on completion of the goal on or before the due date. Goals without deadlines or schedules for completion tend to be overtaken by the day-to-day crises that invariably arise in an organization.

Creating Interest that Lasts a Lifetime

     A theme I've been drawn to lately in my reading, is one of creating readers.  What does it mean to be a reader?  To some, it's being a person who is simply able to read.  To me, it is not only the ability, but the desire to do so.  Steven Layne calls it, "the skill and the will".  Stop and think about your students for a moment.  How many of them sit down and pull out a book before you ask them to?  How many do you see walking with a book open?  How many have a book with them everywhere they go?  Are they talking about them at lunch, recommending books to one another? Hopefully your answers are, many of them!  I'm afraid that the reality is not as many as we'd like.  We need to give our students the opportunity to crave reading.  Book talks paired with classroom library organization is a great start to creating that opportunity.
     In a nutshell, a book talk is 3-4 powerful minutes of conversation designed to connect readers to books.  Steven Layne records information about each book he reads in an effort to later give kids valuable information that helps them make decisions about books.  He delivers several each day, as does author, Penny Kittle.  They are really very simple and include a few key components; hold the book, know the book, share something from the book kids will connect to, and consider reading a powerful paragraph or page.  If you're tech savvy, like our own Nick Davis, you might even make your own book trailer to invite kids to read.  Anticipation questions can also help spark interest and even friendly debates between students that encourage them to read and discuss their different points of view.  Try one!  I guarantee you'll need to go looking for multiple copies of whatever you promote.  Now that they're excited, let's make sure they can find what they're looking for.
     Imagine walking into Barnes and Noble in search of the recently published science fiction only to find all of the books no longer categorized.  The newest in Marie Lu's, Legend series is next to Shakespeare's, Romeo and Juliet.   How long would you be willing to look for what you wanted?  Barnes and Noble would never adopt that policy because they would never have repeat customers.  Well, because they have their books organized and categorized into sections that have meaningful headings.  We want repeat customers.  Make it as easy for your students to find the books they wants in your classroom library as it is for us to find what we want at Barnes and Noble.  Allow kids to independently navigate your classroom library by sorting books into genre and/or author.   Heck, you can even add a "popular titles" or "books just in" section.  
     In the grand scheme of things, these are two simple, manageable ways to increase engagement and begin to ignite a passion that may just lead to lifelong reading.

Scaffolds in the Language Arts Classroom, Not Just for the Elementary Grades

We teach middle schoolers, right?  So, when we think about the ideas of shared and buddy reading, we might associate them with the elementary classroom.  Maria Nichols challenges us to consider that because not all of our students are functioning successfully with the demands of sixth grade text, these scaffolds may be just what the doctor ordered.  We are reminded that using shared reading after third grade, the purpose is to deepen and improve the quality of thinking through discussion about text.  It supports students in thinking and talking as, what Maria refers to as, text users, text participants, and text analysts", through purposeful talk.  Shared reading allows for feedback and immediate support.  Charting this conversation as you navigate the text with students reminds them later about kind of thinking they were able to do and how they used that text for support.
As far as "buddy reading" is concerned, alone students may have difficulty sustaining reading for a long period of time.  But, with a reading partner, they know there's someone to turn and talk to about the text.  When taught, kids can use the partnership to share ideas, exciting moments in the text, reading preferences, or a last verbal practice before sharing ideas aloud in front of the whole class, a sort of peer coaching if you will.  Remember that this is not necessarily for the whole class.  We have kids who have built enough reading stamina and are so engaged, they don't need a reading partner.  On the flip side, we also have those that are striving to work toward that and need a strong relationship with a peer to help move them toward independence.
Ultimately we must challenge ourselves to think about what is "elementary" when it comes to the needs of our students and not let preconceived notions hinder us from doing what's best.