Principals Report
Dear Parents and Friends,
Welcome back to our third term of learning at McGuire College for 2018. We are pleased to report a calm and productive start to our second Semester.
This week, a team of key teaching staff from across the College completed their eighth day of professional learning within the Department of Education Professional Learning Community initiative. As part of this initiative teachers involved have completed a school based project focusing on student goal setting. The benefits of goal setting for learning have been widely acknowledged.
Goal setting increases student’s motivation and encourages them to take responsibility and ownership of their own learning. Studies have found that students who are invested in their learning goals show greater persistence, creativity and risk-taking in the achievement and are more likely to self-regulate their learning behaviour.
The ability to be a self-directed learner is crucial as more and more learning is done within digital learning environments and in other spaces outside of the traditional classroom. Self-direction is also an important attribute of a lifelong learner, which is increasingly being recognised as a key competency and workforce skill in a fast-changing world that demands the ability to adapt quickly.
Goal-setting is a skill.
Like any skill, goal setting can be taught and by encouraging students to start setting effective goals, they can be empowered to take a more purposeful approach to their learning.
At McGuire College we encourage our students to think about themselves as learners.
We spend some time with our students asking questions – with the aim of getting a better understanding of student’s strengths and weakness and what they already know.
This leads to students asking themselves some key questions and focusing them in on where they are, where they want to go and what they want to achieve. As students delve into self-assessment, it is important that they clearly understand what is expected of them so that they are able to assess themselves accurately and fairly. For us as teachers, this means we need to develop clearly articulated learning targets with students and show them concrete examples of quality work.
At McGuire College we believe our students need to have a clear idea of what they are 'aiming for' to ensure the goals are realistic, achievable and accurately reflect what you are doing in class. At McGuire College we make sure our goals are S.M.A.R.T.
SMART goals are those that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant/Realistic
- Time-bound/Trackable
A number of our students already have a general understanding of some goals they would like to achieve. The might look something like this:
I want to be better at history.
We are working alongside students to make their goal SMARTer:
"During Term 1 and 2, I will take notes during every history class and review them after class. I will arrange time with my teacher to ask questions about anything I don't understand. When there are questions or activities that I could have done better, I will make sure to ask the teacher, or one of my classmates and then complete it again for my teacher to review."
These SMARTer goals provide students with tangible learning targets. At McGuire College we reflect on and celebrate our successes. For every goal achieved, no matter how small, we celebrate! If students don't quite get there, that's ok, goal-setting is an iterative process and is all about growth and improvement. Success is an opportunity to create new goals and failure is a chance to revisit and revise old goals and try again.
We use tools such as such as journals, check-lists and rubrics, to provide students with a framework for reflection and self-assessment.
We encourage you to talk to your students about their learning and support them to set goals which will support their growth.
Have a great week.
Kind regards, Claire Kelly
