Students in Mrs. Gerber's (Miss Band) 5th grade class at GEMS World Academy-Dubai are responsible for their own Math learning by setting realistic goals and choosing "just right" activities. Follow my presentation to find our how.

1. Doing Math…
I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know

2. A good inquiry teacher asks her students to provide their
perspective on their progress, so I pose the following questions
“How do you think you are doing?
How do you know?
What do you need to do next?”
Student response: Miss Band, How am I doing and what am I
doing next?

3. Goal setting time! The laborious time of the year when
students have lost the motivation to consider another chore
that is expected of them as I scramble to help them come up
with a statement that fits the criteria of being a SMART goal.

4. Then, it’s full steams ahead, climbing the mountain, crossing
the river, hitting the targets…
Until we get too caught up in day to day classroom life and I no
longer have students even consider how they are working
towards their goals.

5. Like most aspects of what we teach, there is no single
approach to goal setting. I understand the value of it and
needed a system that would be sustainable for the entire year.
Mountains, rivers and target boards weren’t for me.

6. I simply needed students to be able to answer the following
three questions:
How do you think you are
doing?
How do you know?
What do you need to do next?

7. First I became familiar with the continuum…the one we no longer use
Continuums were pasted in the student workbooks and students were made
familiar with the continuums.

8. I created outcomes lists from the continuum...the new continuums do
this for us.

9. From each set of outcomes I created a pretest.

10. Students then used the pretest to check the skills that they are
independent at.
Next they highlighted their continuum to show where they were at
on the continuum.

11. Now they knew where they were at and could choose a center
focusing on their next outcome goal.

12. When a student had mastered the next outcome on the list, they
were required to complete an “I can” reflection sheet to show their
understanding of the outcome before moving on to the next one.

13. The benefits:
This enables students to break Math down into manageable, focused goals,
enabling them to work more productively. Students take responsibility for their
learning and are able to recognize their progress towards goals.

14. The students feel as though they have a sense of control and choice over the
learning, while I can easily differentiate for each learner, as each center focuses on
a different outcome. I am able to use the outcomes lists to give constructive and
targeted feedback. Goals are generally short term and change as students work
towards them.

15. How do you think you are doing?
How do you think you are doing in Math?

16. How do you know how you are doing?

17. How do you know?
How do you know?

18. What do you need to work on next?

19. My students now know how they are doing and
what they need to do next.
But most importantly….
They know what they don’t know!