The relationship between guided teaching and allowing students to learn on their own is a balancing act for any educator. After all, students need to acquire skills that they can use on their own for the rest of their lives.

Targeted instruction brings into focus what students understand and teaches them according to their ability levels, rather than strictly adhering to what they are expected to know on the basis of their grade level.

Targeted instruction also makes goal setting in instruction vital in the classroom, especially for literacy teaching. Educators have a great responsibility to ensure that students know how to set goals for themselves and maintain the focus to achieve them. This task can be daunting, but luckily educator and author Jennifer Serravallo knows how to make this process as smooth as possible.

Join Serravallo March 10 at 8 p.m. for the next #ILAchat on Twitter for her insight into goal setting and targeted instruction in the classroom.

Serravallo is a teacher and literacy consultant with experience in developing literacy instruction for schools. She has written 11 books on the subject of reading and writing instruction; her newest, The Reading Strategies Book (Heinemann), describes 300 strategies for developing skilled readers.

She will also present twice on Saturday, July 9 at the ILA 2016 Conference & Exhibits in Boston, MA. First she will present “Assessing and Teaching Whole Book Comprehension With Independent Reading: Fiction and Nonfiction,” followed by “Building Literacy Classrooms of Agency, Independence, and Joy.”

Follow #ILAchat and @ILAtoday at 8 p.m. March 10 to join the conversation about literacy goal setting in the classroom.

Nicole Lund is ILA’s communications intern.