Goal Setting for Success Part One: Scaffolds

Congratulations on another successful year! Lesson Planet is proud to have such a strong community of hard-working educators. While you’re traveling, spending time with your family, cleaning, and recuperating this summer, don’t forget to take some time to reflect on the previous year. After my first year teaching sixth grade, I have identified and prioritized goals for next year:

• Provide more effective scaffolds for my lower-level learners
• Provide instructional supports for my English language learners
• Take more opportunities to communicate with parents

In the first part of this three-part series, I want to address my most pressing goal: providing effective and appropriate scaffolds so that all of my learners can be successful in my classroom.

This year, I really wanted to focus on providing my kids with a rigorous sixth grade curriculum, as our school transitioned into the Common Core. With higher-level, complex texts, close reads, lots of independent work, and targeted standard practice, we saw a lot of growth with our highest-level learners, but our struggling readers didn’t have the growth we’d hoped for. Next year, I’m excited to provide more appropriate and effective scaffolds so that all learners, regardless of ability level, can perform similar tasks in my reading classroom. Here are some scaffolds that I’m eager to provide and/or polish this coming year to better serve my sixth graders:

1. Create a Goal

Often times, we as teachers have a goal or objective, for the lesson; but how effectively do we relay that to our learners? By the end of the year, I frequently skipped this, assuming the kids would pick up both what they were supposed to learn and why. This year, I’m going to take the time (every day, I hope!) to set my kids up for success by briefly introducing them to their daily goal and its purpose.

2. Graphic Organizers

I taught reading this year, and I admit that I did not provide enough opportunities for my kids to utilize a graphic organizer. Graphic organizers aren’t just beneficial for a writing class, and I’d like to provide these tools when possible. For example, a graphic organizer helping kids master RI.6.8 (tracing an argument through a text) would probably help learners better organize their thoughts.

3. Cue Cards

One challenge our lower-level learners seem to face is the inability to verbalize their ideas. They could have a basic understanding of the concept, but they don’t have the vocabulary to put it into words. While I had accountable talk sheets taped to each table this past year, I think it’s possible to create a daily cue card to help these kids construct and phrase their thoughts. It could be as simple as providing three sentence stems (that use the day’s key vocabulary) for a question that you know you’re going to ask kids to discuss in their partner pairs. This scaffold would also benefit English language learners, who often struggle with new, unfamiliar vocabulary. 

4. Key Vocabulary

While defining unknown words using context clues or root knowledge has been a real focus this year, I want to ensure that all of my learners are able to define and apply key vocabulary words in my classroom. To do this, I’m going to create a key vocabulary list for each unit. For example, if I were teaching a unit about the Holocaust, I might include academic vocabulary (like analyze and conclude), unit-specific vocabulary (like genocide, persecution, and liberation), and other helpful describing words (like destitute and traumatic). Not only will it clearly outline the new words for my learners, but it will also remind me to use the words often and in multiple contexts. To encourage application, I’m going to require that certain answers, homework assignments, summaries, and daily activities include specific vocabulary words. The more often my struggling learners are required to use these words, the more familiar they will become with them.

5. Non-Examples

I recognize the benefit of providing examples to help guide my sixth graders, but I frequently forget to include non-examples, which can be even more powerful. This year, I’m going to use non-examples to set expectations, challenge my kids, and encourage them to think on a deeper level. We’ll discuss why the non-examples are not successful or acceptable, and occasionally I hope to complete class edits where we turn the non-example into a solid answer/example.

What supports do you use with struggling learners? Have you tried any of the supports listed? Help our community grow stronger by including your comments and/or ideas below. We’d love to add to this list of ideas!

Additional Resources: 

Create the Habit of Reflective Writing, A New Year, A New-and-Improved You,