Q. We are going to have to start to have learning targets each day/week and the kids are going to have forms to fill out explaining how they have reached that learning target. I need to figure out how to handle that with this way of teaching.
Here is one possible answer to this question:
Your posted daily learning target, written on the board, if it is a story/listening class could be:
SW listen to [the target language] with the intent to understand.
If it’s a reading class, the posted daily learning target could be:
SW read [the target language] with the intent to understand.
If it’s a writing class, the posted daily learning target could be:
SW write [the target language] with the intent to communicate.
At the end of a listening class, the kids can then report at the end of class that they reached the writing learning target by:
- Responding with one word answers to your questions during the class.
- Interpersonal listening with you as per that rubric.
- Acting (if they acted)
- Drawing (if they drew the story or just drew at their desks)
- Writing what they heard (if they wrote the story or the quiz as per those jobs)
- Whatever they did as their job.
- Listening to a (Text to Speech, etc.) passage in the target language.
- Passing a quiz on what was discussed in class.
At the end of a reading class, the kids can report that they reached the reading learning target by:
- Translating the text with you and the group.
- Discussing the text in the target language.
- Discussing the grammar of the text in L1.
- Reading a [Textivate, etc.] passage in the target language.
- Passing a quiz on what was read in class.
At the end of a writing class, the kids can report that they reached the writing learning target by:
- Writing a free write in [the target language].
- Writing a dictée in [the target language].
- Writing a story based on the vocabulary from the story.
(By the way, I think that asking kids to do this is barbaric. It undermines the natural authority of the teacher in the minds of the kids as they see their teacher being checked on like a rat in a lab. It takes time away from the important things we do to end our classes, including the Quick Quiz and, for those of us who do it, self-reflection sharing about how class went for the kids that day. I strenuously object to this kind of invasion into a professional educator’s instructional time.)