Evaluations, goals and reflection tools, oh my!

Nothing makes me happier than having to do my teacher evaluation. I know pretty much every teacher feels the same way. This year has been very different for me because I was evaluated by our new principal. Not to delve into all the details, but it was so nice to have a frank and honest conversation about my performance. It really inspired me to find the way to move forward and continue to improve. There are elements of the evaluation where points were lost not because I didn't do things, but because I didn't have the artifacts to support that it is done. There are also places where I definitely need to improve - most notably in having students create goals and do reflections.

Goal setting and reflection is something that I always try to do, but the process is very time consuming and by October I always seem to let it fall away. So, now, I am searching for a solution to make the process easier and allow the students to do their portion more independently. I have written out what I want this document to look like, however, I am struggling with finding the right tool to create the form. I am hoping for something user friendly and "pretty". Here is a basic outline of what I am thinking for students to complete:

Yearly Goals

• What will I do?
• What do I need help with?

Unit 1 goals

• PreAssessment results
• Use to create Unit 1 goals
• How will I meet?
• What do I need help with?
• Formative assessment 
• Peer review
• Student reflection
• Teacher feedback
• Goal adjustment
• Unit summative 
• Peer review
• Student reflection
• Teacher feedback (with rubric)
• Goals met?
• How to remediate (if necessary)

So, now all I need is to find the tech method to be able to make this all happen. I want students to be able to complete and me to be able to give my feedback and comments without bringing piles of paper home. I have fixed it so I have to figure this out this summer because I have also told my principal that a tool like the one I want for my students would be a great way for teachers and admin to share artifacts, to collaborate and to help make the teacher evaluation process simpler for everyone. I promised this knowing that I would make sure that I found a workable tool this summer.

I thought it would be easy once I figured out what I wanted, but alas, it is not so. The problem is I can't find the right tool - I was thinking I could create something on Google Docs, but that isn't working. I have searched for ideas online and am not finding what I want. That is why I am throwing this out to my fantastic PLN. Do you know of something I can use? Have you used a good tool in the past? Any ideas and comments would be greatly appreciated!

Revealing student feedback

As promised, I began all my classes with a discussion about last semester and how to improve this semester. Sadly many of my students just stared at me when I asked them for feedback, but some of my level 3s had some good thoughts as to what they need to work on. Many of them carefully avoided eye contact as we talked about how copying the beginning practice work of a unit didn't help the, when it came time to apply their knowledge. Many now understand that by doing that, they end up struggling on the benchmark assessments, summative assessments and the final.

However, as testament to our poor start, many said direct object pronouns are confusing, or I still struggle with the past tense, rather than the application of that knowledge. I was hoping to hear....I still really need to work on improving listening skills, or I still struggle expressing myself while speaking. This mindset is something I have to change. There is still too much focus on grammar. I feel like we spend more than 2/3 of each unit working on application of knowledge but with this feedback, there is still too much emphasis on it.

With that in mind, I have created a weekly calendar of our focus for each day. I have tried this before, but it I such a struggle with the alternating block. It is even more of a struggle in the Spring semester with days off, testing, etc. but I am determined to make it work and have enlisted the help of the students. (I know they love to tell me when we get off task.) I have written the weekly schedule on the board - Monday-writing, Tuesday-conversation, Wednesday-Conversation, Thursday-reading, Friday-listening. So the plan is to begin each class with activities with the appropriate focus. Then students will move on to their assigned work, which also includes these activities.

I also am going to do more one-on-one feedback with the students with their homework phone calls and journals. When I grade them, I almost always give comments to the students, but I know the majority of them don't really look at it. So, every week, I am going to have a mini conference with the students about these activities. My plan is to divide the class into groups of 5 or 6 so I can get to everyone once a month. With the 3s phone calls, I am thinking that after our initial feedback session, I am going to email them their audio and have them evaluate their own speaking first, and then we can go over it together.

Hopefully these things will help the students focus more on the communication, and less on the grammatical portion of speaking Spanish.