Rising to Our Goals

My students participate in a reading program called Accelerated Reader. It is a great program which raised my students reading levels by six months in only two months. I made a bulletin board to help my students see which goals they had met and to help all of the students to celebrate each others accomplishments.

For the background, I used colored paper. We have a big roll of several different colors that all teachers have access to. I chose yellow, but you could choose any bright color. I found some border for the board that had hot air balloons on it. I put it around all four sides of the bulletin board. Next, I made four bubble shaped objects on which I wrote the words, "ONE GOAL!" on the first, "TWO GOALS!" on the second one, and so on. I put them on the board with one goal near the bottom and four goals near the top. Then I made hot air balloons which I cut from a variety of colors of construction paper. I put the students names on the hot air balloons and stapled them to the bottom of the board. Everytime the students reach a new goal, I move them up to the equivalent goal on the board. They get really excited about seeing their successes and are challenged to try harder when they see a classmate has reached a new goal.

Most recently two of my first grade students finished reading a book entitled The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. It is labeled 5.1 reading level. That stands for fifth grade first month! The other students are now challenging themselves with chapter books so that they may also read this book. I have found that showing each students individual successes (no matter how small) to others in the classroom only encourages them to try to achieve greater things.