We spent a few days in New Hampshire over the break and before we left, my daughter had created a "Winter Break Bucket List." We made bucket lists over the summer, and I think I may have created a monster because she wants to make bucket lists all the time now! The third item on her list was to go ice skating. When we arrived at Steele Hill, I read on the activities page that they were offering ice skating time on the pond the next morning. Looked like Emerson was going to get to cross at least one thing off her bucket list! Since getting a new knee two years ago, my husband is slightly protective of me, so I was banished to the wooden benches around the fire pit (not burning unfortunately when we were there), far away from the slippery ice. I was able to watch Emerson wobble around and eventually begin to sort of skate across the pond. There were some other mothers sitting and watching their kids skate as well. Of course, as it turned out, the mom sitting next to me was from Groton-Dunstable, a school district where I was once a principal for seven years. Her kids were at the other elementary school, but now they are in middle school and high school. When she learned that I was a principal, she said, "Can I ask your opinion about something?" She explained that her middle school child's English teacher had been explaining to parents that he was going to have the kids grade themselves basically. I ended up talking to her about the importance of letting kids set goals for themselves and helping them learn how to be reflective. My opinion was that I liked that the teacher was working with students to help them own their learning, to help them set goals for themselves, to help them reflect on their learning, and ultimately evaluate their own learning. Of course, the teacher will probably need to help her child and others understand how to grade themselves, but think about how powerful those lessons will be for those students. It made me think about the action and expression part of the UDL framework. We want strategic and goal-directed learners, don't we? Check out the blue column below. Think about how we can work on building these skills with our learners. Especially the bullet point that says formulate plans for learning. Think about how we can help our students formulate their own plans for learning through goal setting. And then helping them to reflect on if those goals were achieved and if their plans worked. These are skills that we can work on with even our youngest learners. Here are a few articles I came across that talk about goal setting with students: https://www.edutopia.org/article/supporting-student-goal-setting/ https://www.edutopia.org/article/guiding-students-set-academic-goals/ After chatting with that mom, I went back to watching my daughter wobble and sometimes skate across the ice. I realized that maybe teaching her about making bucket lists wasn't such a bad idea. She had set some goals for herself and now she was working on achieving one of those goals. After the skating session was done, I know that our conversation would center around if she liked skating, how she thought she did, and if she wanted to do it again at some point. A nice, quick reflection about her goal and her learning. Think about how you can help your students set some goals for themselves over the next six weeks. Definitely love a vacation week to catch up on my reading time! My husband just shakes his head when he sees me curl up somewhere in our house with my stack of books. I am almost finished listening to You Could Make This Place Beautiful and I am excited to start listening to The Women by Kristin Hannah. So many people have recommended it to me. I am excited about a new opportunity where I will be running virtual book clubs for 5th and 6th graders one night a week. The first book we are discussing is A Wrinkle in Time, a classic that I had actually never read so I am reading that one currently. I am also reading Wild for one of my classes, definitely loved it the first time I read it, now loving reading it as a writer gives me a new perspective. And I started reading a new middle grade book, Simon Sort of Says, over the break.
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