Jaclyn DeForge, our Resident Literacy Expert began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In this series for teachers, educators, and literacy coaches, Jaclyn discusses different strategies for ensuring students hit end-of-year benchmarks in reading.
Last week, I talked a bit about the importance of setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-specific goals for your students in reading, and provided some resources to help you determine where to set them. Today, I want to talk a bit about two things that are imperative to student success in reaching their reading goals: 1) student motivation and 2) regular assessment.
1) Using Goal Charts to build student motivation: Students are super motivated when they can clearly visualize their goal, mark their progress and celebrate each milestone, so creating a goal chart can be a great tool! Depending on your classroom culture and range of student reading levels, you may choose either to display this information as a large chart on a bulletin board and celebrate individual and class-wide achievements, or to keep separate charts in each student’s reading folder and celebrate progress individually.