Ring in the New Year with Crystal Clear Goals: Reflective Practice

The Backstory: Today marks a brand new year, a time when many of us set our sights on goals that will make us better humans. We vow to eat healthier, read more books, reduce screen time, and exercise more. A new year helps us to refocus and start fresh.

By the end of the first week, though, many of us find ourselves in a quandary as we navigate our intentions: What’s most important and where does our time and attention actually belong?

Often, we unknowingly put the writers in our classrooms in a similar position. Within a unit of writing, we push them to attend to genre, structure, organization, sentence composition, word choice, voice, clarity, spelling, and conventions. 

While we know that writing, like life, will always draw our attention in many directions, it is in our ability to focus and commit to one thing that we really begin to see progress. In thinking about how to take this into the classroom, what if we take this year to name and focus on a single clear goal in each unit of writing?

Start Here: Look at your next major unit of study in writing and ask yourself: 

• What is the big goal of the unit? 
• What is the most significant skill or strategy your writers will gain from this unit? 
• What do each of your writers most need to grow?

If you can’t answer these questions (yet), try unwrapping your unit with a fresh perspective by placing the spotlight on one major goal and/or thin-slicing your students’ most recent piece of writing to look for trends and needs.

Behind the Scenes: When we plan out units, we often get caught up in the day-to-day processes and skills we want to teach or we lean into the final writing product as the “finish line” we have to get students to cross. 

Here are a few simple steps for identifying and supporting one major goal.

1. Set your focus by looking at the standards you will teach and the products students will create.
2. Determine the most important outcome of this unit: process, product, or craft.
3. Narrow down your non-negotiable skill: What should all students be able to do by the end of this unit?
4. Build your unit through the lens of that skill.

An Example in Action: As we return from break, the fourth graders in my district will be working on opinion essays. Here is how this unit may be unwrapped (click here for a blank copy of the planning document):

In processing through the unit, it was clear that the focus needed to be on the structure of body paragraphs. This does not mean neglecting other skills and standards–it simply means that everything is taught in service to writing well-structured paragraphs. Here’s how this might look:

• Locating and evaluating sources: While researching, nudge students to notice how well-written sources have structured the information in their writing.
• Organizing writing: Provide graphic organizers and mentor texts that scaffold students’ understanding of how body paragraphs in an opinion essay might go.
• Using transition words: As students write, teach them how transitions serve as the “glue” within and between well-structured paragraphs.
• Revise: For this unit, the revision checklist should emphasize the characteristics of a well-structured paragraph: clear topic sentence, organized ideas with reasons and evidence, etc.

The Bottom Line: While it’s easy–and tempting–to tackle many things at once, it’s by narrowing our focus that we can make visible progress. As we ring in 2024, try setting high-impact goals that are intentional, clear, and will lead to the gains you’re hoping to see.

Happy New Year from all of us at the Two Writing Teachers Blog!