I work with students a lot on goal-setting (see The Best Posts On Students Setting Goals) and share several related lesson plans in my books.
One of the studies I’ve written about discusses the value of students tracking their own progress. Here’s what I wrote about it:
Easy to Visualize Goal Is Powerful Motivator to Finish a Race or a Task is a report on a study that found it’s effective for people to actually see that they are making progress towards making their goal. I think that reinforces the importance of having students regularly reflect on how they are doing, and to, as the researchers suggest, even consider writing or drawing some kind of graph showing their progress. I’m not talking about some big public achievement chart and gold stars here — just one that students keep for themselves.
Following-up on the most recent goal-setting sheet they’ve completed, and reflecting the results of that recent recent study, tomorrow I’m giving students this goal tracking progress sheet (clicking on the link will download a copy).
They’ll pick two of their most important goals and track their progress each week between now and the end of the school year. I’ll have them glue the chart in their notebooks.
I’m very open to ideas on how to make this work better, and I’ll keep readers posted on how it goes.
Great idea and great sheet! We include three to four “action plan steps” after each goal on our reflection page that we do over the course of a semester. Just an idea. I just shared your page with a colleague and I think we’re going to use it tomorrow when we come back from spring break (pre-SBAC pilot and pre-CST). We are thinking about adding something after #1 that says “2. What goals have you set and achieved so far this school year or what do you feel you have improved on this year? How did you accomplish that change and how has it impacted your life?” Or something like that. Thanks for the idea and letting me steal it! 🙂
You may just try goal tracking software http://goalsontrack.com.
In addition to the action plans suggested above I would include another section called “Reflection” or “Thoughts Going Forward”. Hackpad would be the perfect tool for this. Making the reflection on-going makes the final reflection seem….less final and more what it truly should be–a continuous act that ranges back into the past and forward into the contemplated and desired.
BTW, is there any consideration when learners do this that the goal can be revised?