Back to school time is the perfect opportunity to set goals. This new beginning is an excellent motivator to improve ourselves, our community and our knowledge.
It is especially important for students to set goals that apply to their learning to help develop social-emotional learning skills. Encouraging students to set goals and work toward them helps to achieve a specific, self-regulated behavioral goal.
Ready to start setting goals with your students? Read on for great tips on how to encourage your students to dream big and stay on track.
How to start setting goals with students
Picasso did not wake up one day and decide that he was going to be a famous painter. It took a lot of discovery and internal research to define his long-term goals.
Discovery is a great first step for students to look within and decide what makes them happy, excited, and motivated. Here are some discovery questions you can ask your students to get them thinking about what makes them great:
- With what three words would you describe yourself?
- How would your best friend describe you?
- What makes you nervous the most?
- What do you have more confidence in?
Now is the time to start thinking about the future! Before beginning to define their goals, students should think about where they want to be in a year. Here are some questions you can ask your students to start thinking about how they want to develop:
- What are you most interested in learning more about?
- What are you most excited about?
- What skills do you want to develop?
- What do you want to improve?
How to develop SMART goals
SMART goals are used to help guide students, teachers, and adults alike in setting goals that they are likely to achieve. In fact, the term SMART goals is not tied to us at SMART Technologies, but rather stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. A SMART goal incorporates criteria to help you focus your efforts and increase the chances of reaching your goal.
When setting goals with students, the goals may consist of effort management, personal goals, and academic goals.
Specific
What do you want to achieve and how will you get there? What is it like to “work well with others”?
“I want to be on the basketball team.”
Measurable
How will we measure your achievements? Can we look back at the end of the year and say that you have achieved this goal? How do we make sure, at the end of the year, that you have achieved this goal?
“I want to try out and make the basketball team.”
Reachable
Do you have the necessary skills and resources to achieve this goal in a specific period of time?
“I will practice basketball for 30 minutes every day after school so I can try out for the basketball team.”
Important
How does the goal align with your skill development and anticipated progress? Is this goal related to effort management, personality, or academics?
“To become a better athlete, I will practice basketball for 30 minutes every day after school so I can try out for the basketball team.”
Limited in time
What is the time frame to achieve the goal?
“To become a better athlete, I will practice basketball for 30 minutes every day after school so I can try out for the basketball team by October 2023.”
How to keep up with your goals
Now that you have an awesome SMART goal, it’s time to start working towards it. Develop a cadence that works for you and your students to check your goals, assess your progress, and see if your goals need updating.
Checking your goals is important to assess how far you have come. It can be both a celebration of the work you’ve done to date and an opportunity to figure out what needs to happen next to stay on track.
We’ve created a FREE Lumio lesson to help you kick start your goal setting sessions. Save it to your library and customize it to fit your class.
Goal Setting Lesson in Lumio
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&status=0”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
