Practitioner Perspective: Weaving Goals, Reflection, and Transferable Skills into the Curriculum
This week's blog post is from regular contributor Lindsey Halman, founder and teacher on the Edge Academy Team in Essex.Each Monday on the Edge Academy Team at Essex Middle School, we have a full team meeting, called Gathering Meeting. This meeting serves a number of purposes - it builds community, it provides opportunities for youth leadership, it’s fun, and most importantly it is the opportunity to share the Edge Goals for the week. These goals guide our work and provide our learners with a clear vision of what they can expect for the week.
In order to ensure we support our learners in understanding what it means to have self-direction and communicate clearly and effectively, we ask that they share their weekly goals with a parent/guardian or trusted adult on Monday (see Link to Goals Memo Template) and write a reflective email to that same adult(s) on Friday (see Link to Weekly Reflection/Letter Template). These opportunities allow us to ensure that there is clear communication between home and school and that our students are taking responsibility for their learning.
TEMPLATES:
Link to Weekly Reflection/Letter Template
Examples from Students:
VT Transferrable Skills:
Self Direction: Take initiative in, and responsibility for, learning.
Clear + Effective Communication: Demonstrate Organized and Purposeful Communication.
| Weekly Goals | Notes on Goals Deadline | Steps to Completion for the Due Date |
Clear and Effective Communication |
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Future Projects |
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Civic and Social Responsibility |
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PLP |
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Humanities |
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Science |
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****This week is PROJECT’S WEEK****
In order to meet my goals this week, I will….
Work hard, have perseverance, and put in 100% effort
I might need support with…
Driving questions
Thanks for looking over my notes and I will inform you of my progress on Friday!
Examples of Friday Reflections - Weekly Letters Home
Dear Mom and Dad,
This week has been a successful week for me because I completed all of my weekly goals. For the Edge weekly goals, I completed everything except the posting of evidence to Protean (Which I am about to do as soon as I finish this letter.) I created my two driving questions for my yearly project this week. My project goal for next week is to really get into the research and take a lot of notes. In Physical Education, we got split into two groups : Basketball and Weightlifting. I, fortunately, got put in the group that starts with weightlifting. One highlight from the week was the fact that we started a new unit in Humanities and we are going to have book groups. I am really excited to know which book I will be reading. One goal for next week is to get a good grade on my algebra midterms.
Sincerely,
Jessy
Dear family,
This week has been a fun week for me. We finished our windmill task which was great to learn the engineering design process and how to build things on Tuesday we heard a speech from a teacher that went to Cuba she told us about the way they live and how it is very hard to try to make it to america and how different are schools are. In projects we are creating driving questions for our future projects. My highlight of the week was today we went to go see Le Patin Libre, they are a ice dancing group that defies ice dancing stereotype this show was very unique and I'm glad that I got to experience it. My goal for next week is to learn something I never knew before.
Sincerely, Natasha
Dear Mom and Dad,
This week has been pretty busy, with Paige and I making our flan and going to Micaela's to work on projects. This week we also worked on writing our driving questions to help lead our project research. After finishing those, Micaela and I used a directory of LGBTQ staff at UVM (given to us by someone who visited the Edge team named Erin) to find some possible people to interview for our book. We can hopefully start drafting next week. Something else we'd like to do is meet up after school on as many Wednesdays as possible to get some extra work done.
In DTE, we've finally finished constructing our car and we've timed it on the track. It made it to the other end in about 10 seconds, and we're working to make it go faster.
In Spanish, our flan went great! Some people found it too sweet for their liking, but Senora Psaros said it was perfect. I also feel like the presentation in itself went well.
Ms. Wager (she does lessons for the woodwinds) gathered everyone in districts to practice yesterday.
One highlight from this week was making the flan with Paige. That was fun.
One goal for next week is to set up some meeting dates to interview at least one of the people that responded to the emails Micaela and I set up. We'd have to get some help from Phil and Lindsey to do that, though, and we'd also have to create some questions.
See you later!
M