I Can Statements

We have new administration this year.  If you've ever experienced two new administrators in the same year, you can imagine what we are going through.  They need to come in and make the school their own.  Things that are working they re-examine to make sure they are really working, and they implement new things to make the school their own.  One of our new things this year is our objectives written as I can statements.  Well, that's not really new but they want us to write the I can statement and then continue with a "by" portion telling how the students will show this knowledge.  And we write this all on the board so our students can "read" it.  We are supposed to refer to this statement multiple times in the lesson; if an administrator comes in he/she should be able to ask a child what they are learning and the student should be able to respond with their variation of the I can statement.  It's not really anything unusual but it has been a bit of a shift for many of us.  Then, they asked us to possibly write I can statements for all our literacy stations....  I really don't have a problem with writing the I can portion of the statement- it's the "by" part that presents difficulty, especially for a literacy station when they might be doing lots of different things over the course of the two week rotation.  Writing I can statements every 2 weeks for all 13 of my literacy stations and posting them at the stations seemed a bit much even for over-achiever Karla.  So, I decided to try to create generic statements that had the "by" portion that I could leave at the literacy stations.  Now, it's not exactly right because the students are supposed to read these statements and remember what to do at the station.  Two problems with that- 1- they can't read yet and 2- if it's generic enough it won't really tell them exactly what to do.  But if administration wants it, I will certainly give it a try.  So I came up with these. I went through most of my stations that I use during the year and created page sized posters with "I can...by" statements.  Click here to get the set of station cards.  If you use I can statements to post your objectives, do you have to have the "by" portion as well?