Journaling

I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to start a GOALS Journal with my students next year.  Well I have a spent a few days of my summer vacation ( WHAT?!) :) putting this together.
 First I got composition journals that were left over and had a to buy a few extra. I took them to office max and they will cut them for you!  OFFICE MAX.. I called every other place that Pinterest tells you to go and they acted like I was CRAZY! Then I made a cutesy cover page.

 

Then I found that cute quote about mistakes here. Then I created this math label for a subject title page. I didn't save it :( because I am going to have the kids draw their own... if we do a reading part as well.

 

STARTING HERE, I will use the following forms for EACH UNIT.

 

The next page is used to chart their progress FOR EACH UNIT. We do weekly testing. I also decided to only do 12 question tests this year. No reason to bog the kids down and my math period got cut down to an hour. The chart is calculated to each box is colored in for each question they answer correctly. The star box is indicated for bonus questions. :)  If you don't 12 questions and you want to use this graph, you could just white out my numbers and write in your own. Now we might not do five weekly tests before the unit test and that's okay. Those columns will just stay blank. No biggie!

This is the next page. I don't know about you, but our district has been pushing learning objectives. This is for the students to understand what skills they were taught, tested, and had a hard time with. I even considered them highlighting the skills they thought were difficult. There is not a unit test section here because the unit test will be of all the skills for this unit.

STARTING HERE, the following will be used per weekly test.

This is the next page. I will use this every test we complete. At the top it is numbered from 1-12. Here the kiddos will color in the corresponding problem numbers that they missed. Then, they will write in the date and use each box to list the problem number they missed and why. The small box if for the problem number and the big box is for the mistake made.

Here is the next page. It is blurry so the next page is a zoomed in version of what the directions are.

This is the zoomed in version. Students will identify only one mistake they made to work on. You want them to work on the mistake that was made the most, but if its pretty evenly spread out, jus have them choose one. One goal per week is ideal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My MASTER PLAN : After the students finish their test and I quickly grade it, the students will visit a station where I will have a master copy of a completed test. This test will show strategies as we learned them, the correct answers circled, and highlighted key words. ( It will be what an ideal student test should look like) The students will then complete the data pages on their graph and the numbers missed page. They will then use the teacher version of the test to look for mistakes they made. We will use a class ANCHOR chart to help the students identify what mistakes they might have made. At the end of the testing period, we will have a small discussion on what some of their mistakes were. This is how we will create/build our anchor chart.

 

 I know some people will want their students to just write out everything, but that is such a time waster and the students are still writing in their journal, they just have guided pages! :)

 

REMEMBER. Modeling this process is key. You might have to do all the pages with them for the first full unit so they can be totally independent with it later on. Be sure to check in with them individually. You will have some students that will just write in any mistakes and not fully understand what they are doing wrong. Small groups might even be helpful with some of your struggling students.

 

I will make a new post with pictures about this in action once the school year starts. I have these pages for my journal in my TPT store. GO GET IT!

So, what do you think? Tell me what you think! Any suggestions??