I had a couple administrators walk through my classroom the other day. It was no big deal, the principal was just showing her new boss around. We chatted. It was nice. Then I was asked why my daily objectives were not posted anywhere. I gave my standard answer; after about a month into the school year most kids are in totally different places in the curriculum. How can I have one objective when I have a room full of people all doing different things? In the past visitors would accept this answer and move on to something else.
But this time there was a followup question. “Does that mean that all of the students develop their own daily objectives?” I never had a follow up question before. I think I actually stammered in my response. I said something about the advanced kids are supposed to make weekly objectives and if I was better at what I do they would do a better job of it.
I have never really given a lot of thought to each student having a different daily objective. I think it would be a really, really good thing to do, but I don’t have any idea how to make it actually make it work. I can’t talk with each student each day to develop an objective; by the time I got half way around the room the period would be over. But I am thinking I could do a Google form, or a Doctopus page, where each day at the start of the day the student writes down, first thing, what the objective is for the week and the day. That way each student is working on a clear measurable objective. And they know what it is.
I would love to hear other ideas on how I can do this.
wmarkhall 