Setting Learning Goals

I love the teacher practice rubric because it gives me a great reality check and reminds me of the areas of Reading Apprenticeship that I want to work on and need to work on in the classroom.

—Joan Herman, community college instructor

What do team members hope to gain personally and as a team from their time together? What do they hope to know and be able to do? What goals do they have for their students? Reading Apprenticeship can initially feel overwhelming to teachers until they discover for themselves the secret for success emphasized in Reading for Understanding: Start small and keep trying.

Two tools can help teachers focus on a manageable set of Reading Apprenticeship goals: the Reading Apprenticeship Teacher Practice Rubric and the Reading Apprenticeship Student Learning Goals (Appendix C). Once a teacher selects a set of goals to focus on, these goals can serve as a reference for teacher and student formative assessment. Teachers can also refer to the teacher and student goals as they plan lessons and observe in one another’s classrooms.

Over time, selected goals may change as learning progresses and new areas of interest arise.

Using the Reading Apprenticeship Teacher Practice Rubric

Team Tool 4.3, Inquiry into Teacher Practice Goals, suggests a format that teams can use to select and share their individual goals, notice commonalities and differences, and consider how the team’s work can support everyone.

Using the Reading Apprenticeship Student Learning Goals

Learning goals for students parallel the Reading Apprenticeship Framework and are designed to be shared with students as well as to inform teachers’ goal setting and instructional planning. Teams can adapt Team Tool 4.3 to focus on one or two student learning goals they wish to support in particular, and to think about the support they could use from team members to move toward those teaching changes.

PURPOSE

When teachers invest their limited time in being part of a Reading Apprenticeship team, they have certain hopes and expectations for what they will learn and how the team will support their learning. By setting individual learning goals, teachers give shape to those hopes. By sharing those goals, they have a better chance of providing one another the support they may need.

PROCEDURE:

In advance: Team members will each need a copy of the Reading Apprenticeship Teacher Practice Rubric (Appendix C).

• Team members individually read and Talk to the Text of the main goals in the rubric, not the subgoals.
• Individuals then choose one goal to read more closely. They Talk to the Text on the subgoals for that goal, including ideas about which of those many subgoals they would like to work on and what support they might need to do so.
• Partners share their notes about the goal and subgoals they chose, why they chose them, and the supports they would like.
• If time allows, team members share their goals with the whole group, noting similarities and differ-ences and ways that team members hope to be supported.