The Gallery Walk 2010: Setting Goals with AVID

This year our school is doing another Gallery Walk. Last year it was on a Thursday. This year we are going to have the Gallery Walk on President's Day. My wife is staying home with Aidan because preschool is closed. But, for teachers we have a professional development day. So our principal decided to use the day for our Gallery Walk. I personally think this is a great use of the day.

Last year I learned a lot by walking through the library and looking at everyone's presentations. It was amazing to see what teachers had decided to focus on for their trifold board and learning strategy. It is like a teacher science fair. Pretty nerdy, I know. But, for our school and it's headlong dive into Assessment for Learning, I think it is important. We need the time to see what others are doing.

For my presentation last year, I know that 1/2 of it was pulled from other departments and their ideas that they shared throughout the past few years. So you never know where you might get an idea that really propels your class forward.

This year I have decided to showcase something that I use in my AVID class. AVID is a class that prepares students for college. It takes students that might not be in honors classes and prepares them in multitude of ways to make it in those classes and then motivate them to get to college. One thing I do each Monday is a "Goal of the Week." We also write an essay each spring that is called the "Life Goal." So I focused my poster board on Goal Setting.  One of the Assessment for Learning strategies that I have learned is to help students create goals.  So I thought this tied both AVID and goal setting principle of AFL (Assessment for Learning)  together.

Here are a few pics:

The left panel is about "Life Goals" and it has some AVID descriptions of the essay, rubrics and an outline.  The right panel is about "Weekly Goals" and it lists the description of them and has student examples at the bottom.  The middle panel is all about AVID.  The biggest reason I chose to do this as my presentation is so that teachers from across the school (we have 200+) can learn more about our program.  It is essential that our faculty and staff understand what an AVID student is so that they can help recommend students. 

I'll post something tomorrow about how it all went.  Looking forward to seeing the great ideas from my colleagues.