Last time I spoke about creating a goal worksheet and daily reflection log for my students. I was shocked last week when I received 46 out of 47 of the worksheets back. I was able to immediately correct each of the worksheets and find common remarks that I made for most of the students. I was right with the assumption that most students would create relatively simple and vague goals such as “work on NHD” so one of the pieces of feedback I offered the entire class through a power point presentation was to create more specific goals.
This past Monday I gave out new goal sheets for this week and explained to the students what I expected from them. On Friday I collected their worksheets and this week EVERY one of my students handed in their sheets and almost all of them improved upon last week’s grade. I never thought something as simple as writing a goal down would have such dramatic impact in the work they did. I even heard from my Penn mentor that she thought the students were more engaged in the work they were doing and that they looked like they were more on task. She messaged me that, “[She] saw many students hard at work today...some who haven't been so involved in the past. (Penn Mentor)”
Due to extremely dragged out and painstakingly boring approach my school has toward National History Day it’s been tough for me to motivate my students to work hard and complete their work. I’m still shocked that for 2 weeks in a row I was able to get every student to do exactly what they were suppose to. I’m wondering how long this will continue.