2/4 Tuesday - Goals and a Time-Filler

Apparently it is Tuesday again! That week went by fast. Thankfully I have Steph from Stay Tuned to keep me on track with my posts. Check out her blog to see what other music teachers have going on in their classrooms. 

1. Learning Goals

I wrote about learning goals in an earlier post but I'm mentioning them again because they are a big focus for me this year. I found that I kept forgetting to refer to the learning goals last year which made them pretty ineffective. Right from my first classes this year, I warned my students that I will forget to mention our learning goal. I'm counting on some "helpful" students to remind me if I do forget. Instead of me being the one to read the goal I am choosing a student to read the goal and then that individual gets to post the goal on the board. I have to be okay with them smudging the dry-erase markers but I'm working on it. 

2. SMART Goals

I'm hoping to write a longer post about this in the near future so I won't go into too much detail here. My Grade 8s need to set goals. It breaks my heart when kids come close to failing Music. Last year, I was constantly encouraging a few of them to just do SOMETHING. I decided to do something myself and teach them exactly how to set goals using the SMART system. (I apologize for the flash that is covering up "relevant".

3. Get To Know You Questions

It has been a rare occasion that I have had time to fill this past week but I did create a set of 30 get to know you questions just in case. Most of my questions I found from The Idea Door. Some questions don't fit with a public school setting but I tweaked them to match my population. I pulled out my box containing the questions with one class while we were lined up and waiting for their teacher to pick them up. I asked for a volunteer to answer one of the questions. The kids were really excited to get to answer a question about themselves so I know I will be drawing upon this activity in the future. 

That's what we've been up to in my classroom. Head on over to Stay Tuned for more great ideas!