Personal Goals

Personal Goals

My goal for teaching vocabulary was to spend 5 minutes per day allowing students to practice or study their vocabulary words for the week. This goal has been successfully met and I have seen great results from it. The students receive a bell ringer at the beginning of each class that asks them to do different things with their vocabulary words. As students are completing the bell ringer I walk around the room and quiz students on their words. The students then spend a few minutes studying the words they missed and try to get them right the next day. I have seen a big improvement in the students test scores over their vocabulary words. I have students who were receiving 25% on their tests before and are now getting an average of 85% when tested. I have also observed the one of the teachers who teaches vocabulary but, still I still need to observe the second teacher.
The reading goal I had set up for myself was to read two short stories with my class and compare and contrast the various parts of the story. I also wanted to discuss with a special education colleague the best method to read a short story with the class. I have read both short stories with my class and we then used a T-Chart to compare and contrast the various parts of the story. I have also met with one of my special education colleagues. As I stated before, she told me that she usually puts students into heterogeneous groups and assigns them different chunks of the story to read.

Writing is one subject that students will use everyday and in most of their classes. I decided that my writing goal would be to observe my mentor teacher and one other English teacher while instructing students on how to write a topic and conclusion sentence. I have observed another special education teacher who teaches a higher level English class then mine. I also observed my mentor teacher when she instructed her students no how to write a topic and conclusion sentence. She makes sure the students re-state their original topic sentence somewhere in their conclusion. She made learning how to write a fun experience for all the students. Grammar is one of my weakest spots as an English teacher. My goal for teaching grammar was to read the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” to better my understanding of grammar. I have read the first 2 chapters of the book and have already picked up a few grammar rules I had forgotten. A lot of the book is making fun of the English language so the book is enjoyable to read but allows me to learn as I go.

My goal for integrating technology into my class was one of the easiest goals for me to reach. My goal was to learn how to use a Smartboard and integrate it into my English curriculum. Right after I made this goal I was fortunate enough to get a Smartboard installed in my room. Once the Smartboard was installed I was given the opportunity to go to a Smartboard training in-service. I of course went and have begun implementing the Smartboard into my lessons.

Assessments are something that we must do everyday, whether informal or formal. My goal for assessments was to develop a checklist to monitor the progress my students make towards the mastery of a subject. This was an easy goal to meet because my mentor teacher assigned to me by the district actually uses a checklist to monitor her students. She helped me to develop my own checklist and I have been putting it to use every since. The checklist helps me to keep an eye on how students are moving towards their IEP goals as well as the goals of my curriculum.