Don't Dilute: Choose Your Goals Wisely

There's a temptation to try to teach it all, and the result is usually a diluted outcome.  Hurried children and too much curriculum most often result in stress, incomplete projects and missed important steps such as effective feedback, reflection, conversation, coaching and editing.

With this in mind, I'm going to move forward after Thanksgiving with three main academic goals in mind:

• Reading and writing personal narratives.
• Computation and Problem Solving.
• Factors and Multiples.

If you noticed all three goals really included two goals, but I couldn't cull down the long list anymore.

At the center of these units will be a focus on effective coaching that puts student learning center stage.

The success criteria for these elements will include students' completion of the following:

• a hand-crafted personal narrative that demonstrates craft, voice and organization.
• demonstrated skill on facts and computation tests. 
• completion of weekly open response problems. 
• individual and class factors/multiple projects

Now I'll get busy crafting a schedule that meets these goals.  

p.s. We also have time reserved at the end of the month for "Creativity Days."