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Before students hand in their work, they must highlight their name (1-Did they remember to write it?) using the color that reflects their level of understanding. (2-Self-assessment) Genius!

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5 Ways To Promote Active Listening In Your Classroom~For The Love of Teachers

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Teaching, modeling and providing guided practice in active listening engaged and transformed my students into active listeners.

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Accountable Talk Sentence Conversation Stems

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Balckwards Plan Lesson Design Tool

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One area that I consistently struggled with throughout my teaching career is taking time to have my students reflect on their learning. The elusive evaluation portion of the ever perfect lesson plan. I know in my heart that learners need to think about their thinking. Getting students to do this is not always on the top of a busy teacher's full day of exciting learning. In this blog post, I am going to share 3 different ways to make lesson reflections easy and dare I say it, FUN!

Object Reflection

The first, and easiest way to create a reflection time in a classroom of learners is an object reflection. A few years ago I began creating reflection questions based off of tangible objects. At the end of a lesson we clean up and gather for a short reflection on the rug together. Each object representing a different way to reflect on the day's learning.

The rubberband would help us to share what stretched our thinking.

The puzzle piece is a tangible reminder to share a connection we made with the new learning. Sometimes we would connect what we already knew to the new learning too! This sometimes spurred conversations about what is still 'puzzling' to us.

An eraser was a reminder that we are constantly changing our thoughts, beliefs, and understandings of the world around us each time we gain new knowledge! We would share how our thinking changed, what mistakes we made along the way and how we overcame those mistakes, or perhaps we needed to get rid of some misconceptions that came to light!

It becomes easier and easier to think of ways to use objects to spur on critical thinking. The purpose is to open up students to self-awareness not only after the learning, but during! We want students to consider how they are learning, why they are learning, and to know it is all a process. The process is just as important as the final product.

To help students to collaborate use an object that brings team work to light such as legos. Put two legos together and ask students how a classmate helped them understand something new. Using words like peer teach, collaborate, and teamwork often during lesson reflections make it an expectation and norm for part of the learning.

Graffiti Wall Reflection

A popular lesson reflection option is to create a graffiti wall which is a dynamic anchor chart that carries you through the duration of a particular skill or objective. Much like an anchor chart, the graffiti houses information on a particular topic. The difference is that a graffiti wall can be added to at any time by anyone.

To create a graffiti wall, simply write your topic, objective, or skill being studied in the center of butcher paper. Place on the board, floor, or wall. Students can put definitions on a graffiti wall. They can put both examples and non-examples of the topic, and the best is that you can scratch out misconceptions and continue to build upon what is on the chart as you go! Each day as you study a topic, add to your graffiti wall either as the teacher being the scribe, or as a chosen student. After you do a graffiti wall for awhile, students will excitedly want to add to the chart during the learning time in order to share about their discoveries during the reflection time at the end. That's when you know that they are thinking about how they are learning! Success!

Partner, Group, and Class Reflection Question Cards

One way that I like to make reflection time engaging is by using die cuts or clipart as a visual cue card. Simply assign a question to a fun die cut or clip art picture and have students respond to the question stem. Sometimes I drop the clipart question cards into a little bag and have a student come up and choose a picture card with a question for us. Once students have had plenty of chances to reflect in a whole group setting, it is fun to have them break into groups to reflect around the circle.

At the end of a lesson, it is nice to have reflection questions to grab and go! I recently added 120 different reflection question stem cards. There are 20 themes with 6 questions per theme. They can be used with any subject or lesson! Now you can get that important component in with ease!

I chose to put the 6 themed question cards on small rings together. Another idea is to glue the cover theme card to the front of a cute little bag and drop the question cards in.

Here is a look at a set of 5 out of the 6 recess themed cards. I couldn't make the last card fit in this neat and tidy grid... But it exists! Ha!

Peek at the animal antics set! (6th card not pictured)

If you are interested in the Reflection question cards, check them out HERE! Or by clicking the picture below!

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3 Simple Ways to do a Lesson Reflection - Tunstall's Teaching

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3 ways to reflect at the end of any lesson. These three ways to end a lesson will ensure you have the evaluation component tucked into your lesson plan!

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Positive descriptive feedback is one of the most effective ways to reinforce desired behavior in young children and address behavior challenges in a gentle, nonpunitive way. Equally useful for both teachers and caregivers, positive descriptive feedback tells children exactly what they've done, gives them direct reinforcement for acting appropriately, and encourages them to use that behavior in the future. (A good example: saying to a student during morning meeting, "I can tell you're ready. You have your hands in your lap and your eyes on me!") Using this kind of feedback daily can be a highly effective way to:

help children learn what behaviors are expected of them

encourage appropriate behavior, especially when you use it with children who demonstrate challenging behaviors

increase the likelihood that children will engage in appropriate behavior in the future

promote positive interactions between children and peers as well as children and their teachers and other adults

start a "domino effect" of positive behavior, as other children recognize that their peer is being acknowledged for a particular behavior

You probably already use positive descriptive feedback with the young children you teach and care for, but how can you use it more consistently and intentionally? Today's post (excerpted and adapted from Unpacking the Pyramid Model, edited by Hemmeter, Ostrosky, & Fox) walks you through four basic guidelines to follow. While this is a strategy you may find easier and more useful during in-person classes, you can also use it to reinforce good behavior during virtual sessions with young children-and parents can put it to work at home, too.

Use it throughout the day

Positive descriptive feedback is easy to use and can be used almost any time or during any activity. Both teachers and caregivers can use positive descriptive feedback throughout the day and across a variety of activities to help children learn expectations. The more the adults in a child's life use positive descriptive feedback, the more the child learns what to do rather than what not to do, which promotes positive interactions.

Here are some examples of how to use positive descriptive feedback to promote positive behaviors during a school day, and how it can help students who need extra support with behavior:

Start the school day using positive descriptive feedback to greet the children. When you notice positive behavior from a student who has needed support in the past, say, "Good morning, Ben. You are being responsible when you walk slowly to your cubby and put your belongings in!"

As children begin to sit on the carpet for group time, look for children who are sitting quietly and attending to you. Say, "Rudy and Tiffany, look how you are sitting on the carpet on your name! You are ready to learn!" Students who tend to need behavior support will see you say this to Rudy and Tiffany and may quickly imitate their behavior. Notice this and provide positive descriptive feedback to those students, as well.

During centers, circulate around the room delivering positive descriptive feedback to children in the different center activities. Stop by the block area and say, for example, "Kaitlyn, glad to see you sharing the blocks with your friend, Zane. He looks happy." Move on to the dramatic play area and comment on the action: "Kevin, you are cooking eggs in the frying pan and Shante is helping. The two of you are working together and sharing toys!"

As the children transition to lunchtime, use positive descriptive feedback to help them learn the expectations during the transition. Comment on the behavior of children modeling positive behavior on the way to lunch: "José, I see you are walking carefully down the hall next to your partner!"

At lunch, encourage the children to keep their hands to themselves and to clean up after themselves: "Julia and Shante, you are both using your silverware to eat your own lunch! I also saw that you cleaned up by yourselves!"

Individualize your feedback

Some children who engage in higher rates of challenging behavior may need increased exposure to positive descriptive feedback to help them learn behavioral expectations. It's important to individualize positive descriptive feedback based on each child's social-emotional learning needs, adjusting both the frequency of the feedback and the way it's delivered (for example, if a child loses focus when singled out verbally by adults, you may want to intersperse short, specific verbal statements with simple, quiet gestures that acknowledge the appropriate behavior).

When planning to individualize positive descriptive feedback, use the following steps:

Identify activities during the day in which the child engages in challenging behaviors. For example: Ben displays higher rates of challenging behavior during centers and outdoor play. Often, he grabs other children's toys or materials and is aggressive toward other children, such as pushing them out of his way.

Step 2: Identify the behavioral expectations for the activities. A behavioral expectation during center time and outdoor play would be "to share toys and engage in positive interactions with peers."

Step 3: Prior to the activity, provide a verbal statement and model to the child the specific behavior that is expected during the activity. Before center time, for example, you might say to Ben, "If you want a block that your friend has, remember to say, 'Can I have the block?'"

Step 4: Observe the child during the identified activity and provide positive descriptive feedback when the child demonstrates the behavior. For example, if you see Ben cooperating in the block area, you can say, "Ben, look at you! You asked Chris for the block! You are using your words!" Plan to use feedback with Ben every 5 minutes, since this is an area he struggles with. The next time you see Ben asking Chris for the block, catch his eye and give him a thumbs-up.

Monitor feedback and behavioral expectations

As you use positive descriptive feedback, it's important to monitor when you use this practice and how effective it is in changing children's behavior. You might try implementing the following ideas:

Set a goal of delivering two positive descriptive feedback statements every 5 minutes to various children in your classroom during morning meeting, centers, lunch, and outdoor play (activities in which there are generally higher rates of challenging behavior).

During these activities, plan to deliver two additional descriptive feedback statements every 5 minutes to each child who needs extra support.

As a reminder, program a timer to silently vibrate every minute and put the timer in your pocket. Each time the timer vibrates, this will remind you to provide positive descriptive feedback to a child.

Make a simple data collection sheet to monitor the behaviors of children who need extra support at the end of each activity. Over time, this will give you a visual depiction of changes in the children's behavior.

If you're a program leader, consider observing and recording your teachers' use of positive descriptive feedback and reflect together on how this practice is promoting appropriate behaviors.

Share strategies with families

To reinforce the home-school connection, be sure to share positive descriptive feedback strategies with parents and other caregivers. The more often these strategies are used by different adults in different contexts, the more the child will learn expectations and engage in appropriate behaviors. To promote positive caregiver-child interactions in the home, consider sending a weekly newsletter describing how you use positive descriptive feedback in the classroom (we've provided a sample below). Provide several illustrations that parents can use or adapt at home during mealtime, play, and at bedtime. Ask caregivers to share their ideas with you, too!

With the ideas in today's post, you can reinforce positive, appropriate behavior in young children during all of your everyday activities. And for a complete guide to using research-based practices to boost social-emotional development, check out the book:

Unpacking the Pyramid Model
A Practical Guide for Preschool Teachers
Edited by Mary Louise Hemmeter, Ph.D., Michaelene M. Ostrosky, Ph.D., & Lise Fox, Ph.D.

For more than a decade, early educators have relied on Pyramid Model for Promoting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children. Now there's a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to implementing the Pyramid Model, complete with in-depth guidance, evidence-based strategies, and helpful checklists for implementing all tiers of the Pyramid Model: universal, targeted, and individualized.

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4 Tips for Using Positive Descriptive Feedback with Young Learners - Brookes Blog

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Positive descriptive feedback is one of the most effective ways to reinforce desired behavior in young children and address behavior challenges in a gentle, nonpunitive way. Equally useful for both teachers and caregivers, positive descriptive feedback tells children exactly what they've done, gives them direct reinforcement for acting appropriately, and encourages them to use that [...]

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5 Examples of Universal Design for Learning in the Classroom

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to teaching aimed at meeting the needs of every student in a classroom. It can be helpful for all kids, including kids with learning and attention issues. But UDL takes careful planning by teachers. Here are just a few examples of how UDL can work in a classroom.

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As educators, we all want to help our students develop valuable life-long skills, including the ability to think critically about their own work, truly know themselves and their learning styles, reflect on their individual strengths and challenges, and measure their progress toward goals. We want our students to become autonomous learners who take responsibility for their own learning. We want to help our students develop a growth mindset and build resilience. And we want this to happen with every lesson we teach!

How do we do this? Open-ended questions and structured reflection are strategies we can use to support our students' ability to reflect on academic and social-emotional growth.

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions can stretch students' thinking and prompt reflective contemplation because, crucially, they have no one right or wrong answer; any reasoned and relevant response is acceptable. This key characteristic promotes engagement, encourages self-awareness, and nurtures a sense of community among classmates.

Open-ended questions also prompt students to build on what they already know as a way of exploring new content, which supports the natural way children learn. For this reason, they work well in many situations, such as when introducing a lesson, when coaching a student as they work, or when closing a lesson. They are a powerful way to help students synthesize new information, think critically about their work, and identify new directions in learning.
Tips for asking effective open-ended questions:

Genuinely open up your curiosity.

Clarify exactly what you are asking for.

Use words that encourage cooperation, not competition.

Watch out for pseudo-open-ended questions.

Help students focus on social-emotional learning

How were you a friend today/this week?

How did you follow the classroom rules today/this week?

How did a classmate help you today/this week?

What was a challenge you had today/this week? How did you try to overcome that challenge?

Did you have an opportunity to assert yourself respectfully this week? If so, how?

Help students become more aware of how they learn

What are some ways you figured that out?

How is this strategy helping you?

What class activities helped you learn the most?

What skills or strategies did you use to help you learn this content?

What help did you want from the teacher?

Help students take more responsibility for their learning

Is this what you expected or wanted your work to be?

What did you do to help your learning?

The next time you get to do this activity, what would you do to improve your performance?

Why might learning this skill/content be important?

Help students see growth in their learning

What did you learn today/this week?

What can you do now that you were not able to do last week/month/quarter/year?

How can you show that you met this learning objective?

Structures That Support Reflection

Another strategy we can embed into our lessons to support reflection is the use of specific structures that engage students in thinking about the learning that has occurred. For each structure chosen, we must be intentional in aligning the structure to the goal, developmental needs of students, and the current mood of the class. Through the skillful implementation of structures that support reflection, our students will develop speaking and listening skills, metacognition, and a deeper interaction with the content they learned.

Silent Reflection

Think to Yourself - Pose a focus question and provide a minute or two for students to silently think.

Thumb Gauge - Have students respond to a focus question such as "How well did you follow our class rules while you worked today?" with a thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, or thumbs-down.

Fist to Five - Have students respond to a question such as "How well did you work independently today?" with a zero (a fist) all the way to a 5 (five fingers).

Journaling - Each student responds in writing to a focus question.

Partner and Small Group Reflection

Partner Chat - Here are some tips for teaching the skills that make for successful partner conversations.

Interactive Learning Structures - Check out this example of an interactive learning structure.

Whole Group Reflection

Around-the-Circle Sharing - For example "I did _______ because_______." Also, consider asking "Who remembers" questions to encourage careful listening.

Simultaneous Display - Sitting in a circle, students hold up or place work on the floor in front of them. Provide a focus, such as having classmates look for new ideas.

By adding in structured reflection and the use of open-ended questions, you'll see your students strengthen their ability to think critically about their learning. With time, these practices will be embedded into every lesson, and you'll see your students develop the abilities to examine their own work, know themselves as learners, and better set personal goals.

Written by Kerry O'Grady, Responsive Classroom Consulting Teacher, and Educational Consultant and Coach

Tags: Conversation Skills, Engaging Academics, Sharing

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Stop and Think: Teaching Students to Reflect

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As educators, we all want to help our students develop valuable life-long skills, including the ability to think critically about their own work, truly know themselves and their learning styles, Read More "

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Tools for creating digital portfolios, video, and books can help teachers turn meaningful reflection into a critical part of the learning process.

Asking learners to reflect on their learning is a well-established practice for boosting student confidence and allowing educators to better understand learners. But did you know it can also improve critical thinking, help students develop a growth mindset, and support self-regulation?

During a typical busy class day, however, meaningful reflection often falls to the wayside. Luckily, students can gain both social and emotional and academic benefits through tech-infused multimedia reflections. Using digital tools, many of which are already popular in schools, students can utilize text, video, audio, and more to create a perpetual record of their goals and learning experiences.

These practices fit into any grade level, curriculum, and time constraint, and learners are able to express their feelings and record their triumphs in a variety of mediums. Based on our experience as teachers and coaches, here are a few of our top tips for getting started.

Establish A Consistent Routine

In order to see the full, positive benefits of reflection, students should be doing it regularly. When reflection is established as part of the classroom repertoire from the start of the school year, students will be able to recognize their growth on a more consistent basis, and logistics will become second nature.

Formative assessments that may already be part of the classroom practice can be infused with multimedia reflection. Bell ringers and exit tickets can prompt students to wonder about their goals or what they have learned, and Padlet is a great fit for these types of activities. Padlet is a tool that can be used to create a virtual wall where students can post using text, images, pictures, GIFs, audio, and even video in response to your reflection prompt.

These routines can also span multiple school years using Wakelet, which allows students to create multimedia portfolios consisting of a combination of learning artifacts and reflections. As with Padlet, students can express themselves using a variety of tools, but Wakelet is meant to be revisited and shared over long periods of time.

Individual Self-Assessment

The best way to help students reflect on their learning is to provide them with a process for structured reflection. This helps students evaluate their own learning and set specific future goals. These personal reflections can take the form of more abstract, open journal entries and general conversations, but established rubrics have benefits for both student well-being and content mastery.

Try sharing a combination rubric and feedback sheet via an online platform such as Kami, which allows students to assess their created work on their own terms. Kami lets students interact with feedback sheets by drawing, writing responses, embedding video comments, or recording audio. The rubric might ask them to assess their strengths, provide examples of where they did well, and choose areas to focus on for the future. One of the best parts of using a platform like Kami is the ability to look at previous rubrics and reflections so that students see and embrace their moments of growth.

Collaborative Peer Debriefing

Sometimes it can be hard to engage students in a reflection process, because they don't realize it is an important part of the learning cycle. And sometimes it's hard for teachers to provide timely feedback on each reflection. By adding a layer of peer feedback to the process, teachers enable student to build soft skills such as communication, empathy, and teamwork, while putting closure on a learning cycle.

When initiating peer feedback in your classroom, it is important to set the stage by creating a culture of support. Providing students with protocols and sentence stems that they can use when engaging with peers is essential in introducing feedback cycles and building academic vocabulary.

Padlet and Flip both allow students to respond to peer reflections. With Padlet, students can respond to each other using text or a star/thumbs-up rating, similar to "likes" on social media. With Flip, students post videos and then respond to one another via comments. (Microsoft's Immersive Reader, which translates text and provides captioning, is built in to support all types of readers.) Both tools give students an opportunity to practice online discourse and digital citizenship on safe platforms where teachers can intervene if needed.

Making Reflection Accessible

Using the same tool for reflection consistently. Removing the barrier of having to figure out the tool each time helps students get right into the act of reflecting. This barrier can overwhelm some students, such as emerging readers and Level 1 English language learners.

Providing tools with language options. These include speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and language selection.

Following the Universal Design for Learning framework. This allows students to communicate their reflections in the media that work best for them. Selecting platforms that enable students to choose between text, video, audio, and images promotes student empowerment.

Scaffolding with templates or questions that can help students guide their reflection.

Ensuring that your reflection prompts are culturally relevant. We must know our students' backgrounds and use that knowledge to make reflection prompts that embrace their cultural and lived experiences.

If we want all students to be able to experience a deep and meaningful reflection, we need to make sure we are creating activities that are accessible to all learners. Here are some ways to develop accessible reflection activities:

Book Creator is another of our favorite platforms for reflection. With Book Creator, students can create digital books, which can be downloaded as an e-book or shared with families online. These books are perfect for long-term reflection projects like portfolios or can be used to make interactive notebooks with embedded reflection. What we love most is that Book Creator is built with accessibility in mind, taking into account those using screen readers or emerging English speakers.

Reflection is a highly effective educational practice, backed by research and demonstrated by the seminal works of John Dewey, David Kolb, and Donald Schön. In our experience, the relative ease and convenience of digital tools means that meaningful reflection practice can fit into any existing classroom environment.

Best of all, reflection isn't just for students-educators can profit from it too. As you consider these strategies, try your hand at developing your own reflective mindset using the "3-2-1" method: What are three ideas new to you, two "aha" moments you experienced reading this article, and one action you will take using what you learned? Happy reflecting!

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Encouraging Meaningful Reflection With Creative Digital Tools

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Tools for creating digital portfolios, video, and books can help teachers turn meaningful reflection into a critical part of the learning process.

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A state Teacher of the Year shares her techniques for increasing the number of students who talk and share their ideas in class.

While it is possible to learn by listening, I've found that oral participation leads to greater gains in student literacy and engagement. English language learners in particular benefit from ample talk time, but they are not the only ones.

Yet I've also found that without careful planning, a few students do most of the talking while the majority of the class remains silent. My students all have ideas, but only some of them share those ideas on a regular basis. Adding wait time after I ask a question helps more students get into the conversation, but still the more confident students are more likely to raise their hands.

Because of this, I pay close attention to who is participating in my high school English classroom and to the structures I'm using to promote participation. I mix and match from the following strategies depending on the students in the room and my goals for the lesson.

9 Ways to Encourage More Students to Talk

1. Who talks first? When students turn and talk, I decide who talks first. The person on the right? The person whose birthday is coming soonest? The person with the longest hair? Without this direction, some students dominate partner talk time.

2. Write, pair, share: Many of us use the think, pair, share model, but substituting writing for silent thinking can improve both the quality of the conversation and the number of students who contribute. As students write, I walk around, reading over their shoulders and writing things like, "That's good. Say that!" on the papers of quieter or less confident students. I can also see which and how many students are stuck, so I know if I need to add more scaffolding.

3. Pairs and squares: I assign students a partner (pair) to work with for three weeks, as well as a square (two pairs combined). I promote camaraderie in pairs and squares by having students learn each other's names (with spelling and pronunciation), gender pronouns, and something people can't tell by looking at them. They also make up a handshake they use each day to greet each other.

They talk in their pairs from bell to bell between direct instruction about the topics of the day. Currently, my sophomores are engaging in a nonfiction unit on happiness, so today we discussed the correlation between money and happiness, and students worked in their pairs to annotate an article, but when we analyzed some rather complex graphs and charts, they moved into their squares so they could have more brain power.

After three weeks, each student thanks their partner for something they did for them and shares what they think was the pair's best moment together. By the end of the year, every student has worked with every other classmate-either in pairs or squares-which promotes a strong classroom community and helps students feel more comfortable participating.

4. Nonverbal agreement or disagreement: I have my students use the American Sign Language signs for "yes" and "no" in whole class discussion to show their agreement or disagreement with the speaker. This keeps students engaged, gives the speaker immediate feedback on their ideas, and gives all students a nonverbal voice.

5. Metacognitive goal-setting: Every few weeks, I have students reflect on their participation habits and set goals for a particular discussion. Students get an index card at the beginning of class and write a quantitative and a qualitative goal for their participation for the day. As they set their quantitative goals, I encourage them to think of "stepping up and stepping back"-what would be a healthy number of times for them to speak that day? Should they talk more frequently, or refrain from talking in order to make space for others to talk?

For their qualitative goal, they consider whether they need to ask more questions and whether they should do things like build on others' ideas or use text to support their points.

Throughout class, students take notes on their own contributions to the discussion, write down what they said (and didn't say), and tally the overall number of times they talked. They end class by reflecting on their participation. Did they meet their goals? Why or why not? Can they set some new goals for themselves? This card is their exit ticket for the day.

6. Talking piece: For some small group discussions, we use a ball as a talking piece that students pass around-only the person holding the ball can speak. Every student gets the ball once before anyone gets it a second time. This is particularly effective when discussing very emotionally charged topics, like issues of race or gender, when we want to be certain that everyone has the opportunity to share their experiences.

7. Musical give one, get one: When I want students to hear a lot of ideas, I have them write down their thoughts and then stand up, walk around to as many people as they can, and write down one idea of each person they talk to. I usually do this to music-students need to get to as many people as they can before the song ends.

8. Musical shares: This is similar to the last idea but is better for sharing longer, more in-depth answers. I put on a song, and students walk or dance around the room. When the music stops, they talk to the person closest to them about their ideas. I use a timer to ensure equity of sharing here-each person speaks for one minute.

9. Keeping track: I keep a blank grade book roster on a clipboard, and while students are working in pairs, I put a tally mark next to each student's name every time I hear them speak during class. I'm sure I don't catch everything, but the act of keeping track forces me to notice the participation patterns in the room and to seek out those who have learned to fly under the radar.

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9 Strategies for Getting More Students to Talk

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A state Teacher of the Year shares her techniques for increasing the number of students who talk and share their ideas in class.

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5 total participation techniques to make every student an active learner

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Why calling on students should be the LAST strategy you use to find out what they know...and how to get ALL kids involved instead.

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A look at a set of communication skills that can help teachers achieve productive outcomes in conferences with students or their parents.

Looming before me was a conference with parents who were concerned that their child was not being challenged enough in math. I was prepared and full of suggestions-and my preparedness turned out to be a problem. I was a distracted, unfocused listener as they voiced their concerns, jumping in before they could finish their questions and thinking ahead about what I'd say next.

I did eventually realize the conference wasn't going well and tried to reboot my focus by listening more, saying less, and paying more attention to their tones of voice, postures, and facial expressions. That made a real difference, and the conference had a productive outcome. After that time, as I progressed as a teacher I learned more about the active listening skills I had hit upon on that day.

What Is Active Listening?

Good communication skills go beyond speaking and listening. They include being tuned in to the speaker's nonverbal behavior and emotions, and the deeper meanings of what they say. By employing active listening skills in conferences with students or their parents, we promote mutual understanding and successful outcomes.

Active listening encompasses being nonjudgmental, with an emphasis on listening and not immediately solving the issue or problem. Active listeners don't jump ahead to think about solutions while the speaker is still speaking. They also refrain from getting defensive.

Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding such that the speaker knows you're truly interested in their ideas, concerns, and opinions. It involves giving the speaker your undivided attention, withholding judgment, and being mindful of your facial expressions and body language because nonverbal communications to show your respect for the speaker.

Suspend judgment: We can reduce misunderstandings and our tendency to jump to conclusions, often caused by our biases or expectations based on past experiences. Before and while listening to the speaker, check your frame of reference to avoid letting your preconceptions or predictions about what will be said interfere with your fully attending to the speaker.

Focus on the speaker: As the other person speaks, maintain eye contact but note nonverbal cues-the speaker's facial expressions, vocal inflection, or posture. Consider how your own tone, posture, position, and expressions might be interpreted by the speaker. Either remain neutral or provide encouraging nonverbal cues such as nodding affirmatively, smiling, or leaning toward the speaker. With reluctant speakers, you can use encouraging phrases like "I hear what you're saying" or "Please continue."

No interruptions: Even questions you feel are important may potentially interrupt the speaker's flow as well as confidence. If you can, try to remember your question. If you need to, write your questions and thoughts down, but explain before the conference that what you write is to help you remember things said and that you want to ask. To reinforce trust and further communication, keep your notes open for the speaker to see.

The Importance of Wait Time

Pausing before you respond-wait time-serves several purposes. It's natural to jump in with solutions, especially as you've likely given thought to the conversation in advance. However, this can block further communication if the speaker has not finished because your interruption can be interpreted as a lack of interest in hearing more. You may also find that as the speaker continues and you actively listen, you achieve greater insight and ultimately provide better suggestions.

Waiting to be sure they are finished shows that you're focused on the speaker. And not jumping in before giving thought to what you've heard helps prevent misunderstandings.

You'll also find that during any pauses, the speaker may add additional highly important information. Such pauses, which demonstrate your focus, may give the speaker the reassurance to reveal something they were reluctant to share, now that they're confidant of your empathy and understanding.

Remember that sustaining eye contact and an engaged posture is critical to ensure that wait time is interpreted as showing your interest rather than boredom or distraction.

Responses after the wait time: Verbalizing the feelings you perceive the speaker as having is valuable, but be sure not to sound accusatory: Instead of "You sound very frustrated," try saying, "I feel that you're frustrated-is that right?"

Summarize what you've heard, using the speaker's words or your own-this confirms your desire to truly understand, build trust, and provide more opportunities for the speaker to clarify or extend. "It seems to me that you're saying _____, but please let me know if I'm misunderstanding you or missing something."

After establishing that you have understood the speaker's meaning and/or emotions, you can ask for their input regarding next steps or solutions. Don't reject outright any ideas or suggestions they make while they're giving you their feedback, and after they've had a chance to reply, ask if they'd like your input-don't jump in too soon.

As you build upon your active listening skills, you'll find that your conversational partners' positive emotional states and responses reflect their trust and awareness that they have your full, nonjudgmental attention.

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A look at a set of communication skills that can help teachers achieve productive outcomes in conferences with students or their parents.

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Many students struggle with these skills, which are tied to academic success. Here are a few ways to teach them explicitly.

Many students struggle with speaking and listening skills and the ability to work together in the classroom-vital social skills that are also important in academic learning.

In our district, we noticed a particular decline in speaking and listening skills in response to remote and hybrid learning and subsequently took an intentional, district-wide approach to supporting student discourse that has contributed to significant academic gains.

By facilitating professional development, inviting instructional coaches into our school, selecting curricula that centers student talk, and exploring teaching tools such as sentence starters (e.g., "I agree with you because...," "Can you tell me more about that...," and "I know a different way to solve that..."), we promote accountable, respectful dialogue in and outside of the classroom.

If you, too, are looking for specific, systematic steps to get the conversation going in your classroom, here are a few ideas to help get you started.

Create book clubs or literary circles

Pair students based on their interest in a topic, not by their reading levels, and get them talking to each other and the class about the books they enjoy. Provide supports like audio versions of a text if needed, to make the groupings more equitable.

You might ask students to offer a book review upon completing a book, but to do so verbally instead of in written form to boost speaking and listening skills. You can also encourage a question-and-answer session about the book, in which a student reader is considered an expert and is interviewed by their peers to keep the conversation going.

In a recent classroom visit, I saw students involved in literary circles based on student choice. Students chose a book that they found interesting after learning about books during a "book tasting"-an activity in which students walked around the classroom and surveyed information about books that were appropriate for their grade level, presented on different tables.

I returned to the classroom after students dove into the books. The teacher and co-teacher took turns rotating between the groups and asked students open-ended questions about themes and content. The discussion was inspiring, and after teachers posed the initial question, students were able to lead, direct, and continue the conversation organically-an ability that we attribute to the students' ability to choose the books that they found most compelling.

Get started with Socratic seminars in any subject

To make Socratic seminars dynamic and engaging, you can start by writing open-ended questions on a soccer ball. Then, simply start tossing the ball around the room. The student who catches the ball reads aloud the question that is facing them and responds.

This activity incorporates kinesthetic engagement into the curriculum and works well across subjects. You can find examples of open-ended questions to adapt to your particular unit or lesson topic and write them on the ball. For an added challenge, you might invite students to brainstorm open-ended questions for inclusion in this activity, too, facilitating discussion about what types of questions best support critical thinking and discourse.

Teach about Accountable Talk

Accountable talk is an approach to scaffolding responsible, responsive dialogue in the classroom; often, teachers need to model productive discourse explicitly at first, such as using and talking about insightful open-ended questions or sentence frames, but a gradual release of responsibility can then help students succeed in independent discourse.

Reward students with small incentives when you first roll out accountable talk in the classroom. One teacher in our district uses stickers when he hears students using the accountable talk sentence stems that he displays on his board.

Students can then turn these stickers in for a homework pass when they reach a certain number, incorporating an element of gamification that makes speaking and listening an explicit and continuous consideration in the classroom.

Make it equitable

Even when promoting speaking and listening skills with students, it's important to ensure that the loudest voices don't crowd out the others. Collaborative, group-based, or project-based learning are great ways to spark student conversations in an equitable way.

One way to do this is to make sure that everyone has a role in the group and to explicitly teach kids how to work together. The more students are able to collaborate and practice speaking academically and respectfully with one another, the more natural it becomes for them to have productive discussions.

Rearrange the furniture

Flexible furniture allows teachers to group students in different ways and create comfortable learning environments that lead to conversation. Our State Department of Education is funding classroom redesigns in several schools to support flexibility; some will get desks with built-in whiteboards, and others will have chairs with wheels to help students make small groups. Lego walls and STEM-related items will encourage students to work collaboratively. Search for similar grants or funding opportunities in your district to make flexible seating accessible to all, supporting students' speaking and listening skills by extension.

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Strategies for Supporting Students' Speaking and Listening Skills

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Many students struggle with these skills, which are tied to academic success. Here are a few ways to teach them explicitly.

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13 Tips to Quickly Deliver Super Effective Feedback

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These efficient feedback strategies support student learning without sacrificing a teacher’s nights and weekends.

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In this Intervention Brief, we explore 2x10 Relationship Building, an intervention that empowers educators to build authentic relationships with students and increase their sense of belonging. You can find the 2x10 Relationship Building strategy in the intervention library of Student Success, Panorama's MTSS intervention management platform for school districts.
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Quick Summary
Intervention Name: 2x10 Relationship Building (or Two-by-Ten Relationship Building)

Tier(s): 2

Grade Levels: K-12

Description: Support students by spending two minutes per day (for 10 consecutive school days in a row) connecting with a student individually and offering extra social-emotional support.

[Free Download] 15 SEL Intervention Ideas for School and District Teams

2x10 Relationship Building Intervention Overview

2x10 Relationship Building-originally coined the "two-minute intervention" by researcher Raymond Wlodkowski and popularized in Allen Mendler's Connecting with Students-is a Tier 2 intervention that helps build teacher-student relationships, reinforce positive behaviors, and convey genuine support to an individual who might be typecast as a "challenging student."

At its core, the 2x10 strategy is about consistently building relationships with students. Educators (or school leaders) select a particular student and set a goal to engage in a 2-minute conversation with that student for 10 consecutive school days. These conversations might happen at the beginning or end of a class period.

Research shows that implementing the 2x10 intervention can lead to significant improvements in individual student behavior and the broader classroom climate.

Not only can the 2x10 strategy create a positive connection between an adult and an individual student, but adults can also use it to model core SEL competencies such as social awareness, self-awareness, and relationship skills through empathy and active listening.

Who Does the 2x10 Strategy Work For?
The 2x10 Relationship Building intervention works best for students who are having a hard time maintaining positive relationships in the classroom, exhibiting disruptive behaviors, or are in need of extra emotional support. It provides students with a safe outlet to communicate their feelings, emotions, and needs to a trusted adult. This targeted intervention can be used as a behavior support for individual students in elementary school, middle school, or high school.

Consider the following criteria when identifying students who will benefit from the 2x10 strategy:

Students who respond positively to adult attention and connection

Students who are struggling to connect with peers (or adults) in the school community

Student who struggle with emotion regulation, social awareness, and disruptive behavior

How to Implement the 2x10 Strategy

1. Choose one student whom you would like to strengthen your relationship with.

2. Select when you are going to approach the student (e.g., at the beginning of a class period).

3. Find the student and start a conversation with them. To build a productive relationship with a student, adults will likely have to initiate the connection.

4. The focus of these conversations should be:

Brevity.These conversations should last two minutes or under.

Student Voice.Invite them to share something non-academic with you about their day or life. Here are some great get-to-know-you question prompts.

Honesty.Model transparency and authenticity by sharing something personal/non-academic with the student.

If you use Panorama: You can select the "2x10 relationship building" strategy when creating an intervention plan for a student. Monitor the student's progress over time by logging notes. Everything will be saved to the student's profile and visible to other educators with access to Panorama.

Example of a student intervention plan in Panorama (mock data pictured)

"After implementing 2x10 relationship building in response to Panorama survey data, we had an increase of over 6 percent of students who felt a favorable sense of belonging and connection to adults. That's about 75 to 80 kids. Those students also improved their attendance, academics, overall sense of well-being, and SEL strengths."
-Luke Rasmussen, Executive Director of Secondary Education (Read the full story)

Tips for Effective 2x10 Strategy Implementation

Keep the content of the conversation focused on the student's personal interests, not their schoolwork or behavior. Use an interest inventory to ask questions, or use context clues (e.g., what the student is wearing or likes to talk about in class) to help drive the conversations. Find out what their favorite food is or what their hobbies are. The goal is to get to know the child outside of school in an authentic manner.

Consistency is key. Even if the conversations are shorter than ten minutes, they can be beneficial if they occur every school day. Holding a 30-second conversation for 10 days in a row with a student conveys more care than having just one 30-minute conversation.

Ask open-ended questions, and don't be afraid to probe if students start to open up.

Be a persistent, positive role model.

Keep the momentum going after the 10 days and continue to engage the student on a regular basis.

Additional Resources on the 2x10 Strategy and Other Behavior Interventions

Download this packet of 15 evidence-based SEL interventions [includes instructions and templates for use].

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2x10 Relationship Building: How to Do It (and Why It Works!)

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The 2x10 Relationship Building strategy is a Tier 2 behavioral intervention that empowers educators to ritualize a classroom management technique to create a personal connection with students

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In the last few decades, differentiation has become one of the biggest buzzwords in education. But what exactly is differentiated instruction, and how can teachers effectively use it in their classrooms? Read on to find out.

Source: ASCD

Differentiated instruction means tailoring your teaching so all students, regardless of their ability, can learn the classroom material. Early one-room schoolteachers were masters of differentiation. They taught students of all ages and abilities, changing up their methods as needed.

As schools moved to dividing students by age into grade levels, differentiated instruction more or less fell by the wayside. Teachers taught all students in their classroom in the same way and expected the same results. Not surprisingly, some students struggled to keep up, while others were bored when they mastered the material more quickly than others. Inclusion made these contrasts even greater, and some began to realize education needed new approaches.

During the 1990s, Carol Ann Tomlinson introduced the concept of differentiation, and it quickly gained traction. She identified four elements (content, process, product, and learning environment) that teachers could customize in their classrooms. Her work opened the door to a wide array of differentiation approaches and techniques.

Why is differentiated instruction important?

Source: ASCD

Think back to the last time you bought a pair of jeans. You probably had a multitude of choices, like slim, relaxed, or classic fit; petite, regular, or tall; stretch fabric or plain denim-the options were likely endless. Somewhere in all those options for jeans, you found the ones that were right for you. Maybe not perfect, but something that suited you better than any of the other options.

Buying jeans wasn't always like that. A few decades ago, there were just a few styles, in different sizes. For those with a particular body type, that was just fine. But it meant many others were left with ill-fitting, uncomfortable choices, and they just had to make do. Manufacturers and stores eventually realized they needed to differentiate their styles to meet all their customers' needs.

Just like people have different body types, they also have different learning styles and abilities. If teachers only offer one way to learn the material, some students will always struggle. Their "jeans" will never fit, and they'll never truly master the material they need to succeed.

Differentiated Instruction and Learning Styles

In the mid-1980s, teacher Neil Fleming introduced the VARK model of learning styles. He theorized that students learned in these four general ways, known as styles, or modalities:

Visual: Seeing images, diagrams, videos, etc.

Auditory: Hearing lectures and having discussions

Read/Write: Reading the written word and writing things down

Kinesthetic: Movement and hands-on activities

In other words, some kids learn better by reading and writing, while others prefer to listen to a lecture or watch a video. Fleming noted that each student uses a mix of these different styles, and it's important not to pigeonhole a student into any one type. The key is to ensure your teaching methods include a variety of activities that appeal to all learning types.

This concept gets right to the heart of differentiation. Recognizing that your classroom contains students with an assortment of learning styles, along with varying abilities and diverse backgrounds, is the first step toward accommodating them.

What does differentiation look like in the classroom?

So, what does this mean for teachers? Are you expected to create an individualized lesson plan for every student in your classroom? Fortunately, that's not necessary. What you do need to do is ensure your lesson plans include a variety of activities, and provide options when students need them.

Tomlinson recommends teachers consider how they can personalize these four elements:

Content

Teachers don't usually get to decide exactly what they're going to teach in terms of content. Most schools use standards like Common Core to lay out what students at each level must master. What teachers often can decide is how they'll present that content. Here are some ways to differentiate content ( see more here).

Have students read an article, watch a video, and/or listen to a lecture on a topic.

Used leveled reading materials to help students explore the same content.

Tailor assignments as needed, i.e., have slower workers do fewer practice problems as long as they can show mastery, while advanced students can do extra or more challenging exercises.

Process

There are so many ways to mix up the teaching and learning process. Accommodate different learning styles with various activities, and scaffold learning by breaking it into more manageable chunks. These are examples of differentiated processes (see more here).

Create learning centers that give kids self-paced practice time in hands-on ways.

Incorporate active learning with manipulatives, movement, and games.

Form learning groups and use a tiered approach, with each group mastering content or skills at various speeds.

Product

It's no secret that some kids are terrible test-takers, or that speaking in front of the class is torture for others. You can work to improve those skills, of course, but in the meantime, it's important not to punish students because they need different ways to show their mastery of a topic. For example, unless you're specifically teaching public speaking skills, don't force every student to do an oral book report. Here are more ways to differentiate the product ( see more examples here).

Doing a research project? Allow students to choose how they'll present their findings: write a paper, give a presentation, create a video, etc.

Use a variety of question types in written tests, and help students learn good test-taking skills.

Provide "must do" and "may do" options for assignments.

Learning Environment

Stroll the halls of a typical school, and you'll notice that every classroom looks and sounds different. Some have desks in rows, while in others desks are pushed together or students group around tables. One is completely silent, while another bustles with discussion. Some students adapt well to these changes, but others do better in specific environments. Try to accommodate as many as you can in your space.

Try out flexible seating-let students sit where and how they feel comfortable and ready to learn.

Let some students wear headphones and listen to music while they work, while keeping the classroom quiet for others.

Create calm-down corners, collaborative spaces, sensory spaces, learning centers, and more.

For more information on Tomlinson's theories, complete the online learning module found here.

How do I get started with differentiation in my classroom?

The best teachers are those who are observant and know their students well. They watch closely as kids work (and play), and check in regularly to find out what's working and what's not. Try these resources to start your journey to better differentiated instruction.

Differentiated Instruction Books

Have questions about differentiated instruction and how to use it in your classroom? Join the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook to exchange ideas and ask for advice!

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What Does Differentiated Instruction Look Like in the Classroom?

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Teachers hear a lot about differentiated instruction, but what does it really mean? Find out what it is and how to use it here.

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GPS: Learn This Simple Acronym to Help Give Students Better Feedback

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Quality feedback does for a learner what GPS does for a traveler. Rather than leaving your learners stranded, provide GPS feedback.

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1. Ask "What stuck with you today?"

Find out what made the most impact with one simple question. Sticky notes are fantastic for exit tickets; just have each student post theirs to the board on their way out the door.

2. Lunch questions

In elementary classrooms, there's no need to wait until the end of the day. Try using exit tickets before lunch or recess. Kids too young to write? Have them tell you their answer on their way out the door.

3. Have them "tweet" it

This cute "Twitter" board is sure to appeal to young social media fans. Laminate the cards so they can be reused each day.

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4. Gauge understanding with emojis

Here's another way to help today's kids connect and share their progress. Have them circle an emoji on this free printable and explain why it reflects their understanding.

5. Record a Flip video

Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a totally free online tool for schools, where kids record video answers to a question posted by their teacher. This is such a cool exit ticket idea for virtual classrooms, though it works in face-to-face classrooms too.

6. Collect exit tickets on a traffic light

Have students post their tickets on a traffic light to indicate whether they're doing fine or struggling a bit. That way, you can focus on those who need more help first.

7. Give them a prompt

Sometimes exit tickets are very specific, but other times you just want to know what students' general reaction was to the class that day. We like this simple option that offers a few prompts to get them started.

8. Use the "Post-It, Prove It" method of exit tickets

Here's an example of a more specific exit question. Try to ask questions that have more than one right answer, so students don't just copy each other's responses.

9. Let them teach others

Kids often surprise us by looking at things in entirely different ways but still getting the correct answers. Their thoughts on a subject may give you ideas for helping other students who need a bit more instruction.

10. Take a poll

Online polls make terrific exit tickets. Poll Everywhere is free to use, and kids can text their answers. Fun!

11. Encourage self-reflection

Valuable as they are to teachers, exit tickets are also important for helping students self-assess. This version lets them reflect on their strengths and areas for improvement.

12. Tell two facts and a fib

We love this interactive ticket idea! Kids write down two facts about today's subject and one fib. They trade with another student to see if they can guess the incorrect fact before turning them in.

13. Try them in any class

Oui, oui, les "billets de sortie" work in French class, or Chemistry, or Art History ... every teacher should try them.

14. Keep an exit ticket journal

Give exit tickets a bit more substance by having students keep them in a journal. This gives them a nice record of learning and can help when it comes time to review for tests or write a paper.

15. Post exit tickets on Padlet

Think of Padlet as an online bulletin board. Teachers post a question or topic, and kids add their answers. See our review of Padlet here, then give it a try.

16. Print exit tickets on sticky notes

Did you know you can easily print on sticky notes? This game changer means you can easily customize exit tickets for any topic.

17. Write a 3, 2, 1 list

The 3, 2, 1 method allows kids to self-assess, but it also lets them indicate a deeper level of interest in the topic at hand.

18. Make it a mini-assessment

You'll have to prep these in advance, but an assessment exit ticket is sort of like a no-stress quiz. Kids simply do their best, without worrying about grades, and you get a better feel for their progress.

19. Fill up a shopping cart

Here's a chance to really see what their takeaways were from a lesson. This will let you see if your learning objectives are coming through as they should.

20. Follow science lab with exit tickets

Hands-on science exploration should be followed up with written observations and conclusions. Use exit tickets to check for understanding.

21. Sum it up with one sentence

Help your students distill what the day's lesson was all about with a one-sentence summary. This requires students to prioritize the most important elements of the activity and reveals whether they are getting the "big picture."

22. Keep it simple

Sometimes you look out at your students and you see a lot of blank stares. When this happens, take a quick moment to use this exit slip. It will help you assess who's on board and who needs further instruction.

23. Change it up

If you always use the same exit tickets after a lesson, your students might go on autopilot. Change up your format by asking students how they're doing in a variety of ways.

24. Match your exit tickets with your teaching philosophy

These colorful prompts were developed to support the Habits of Mind framework. Choose from questions that encourage your students to observe, reflect, and explore what they're learning.

25. Collect answers on Google Forms

Teaching online or looking to save paper? Collect your tickets using Google Forms instead. This is especially useful if you're already using Google Classroom.

26. Take time to analyze exit tickets

Make sure your exit tickets are worth the effort. Spend a little time at the end of each class or day looking over student responses, and make notes about any needs they indicate.

Exit tickets are just one type of formative assessment. Check out our guide to formative assessment.

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26 Exit Ticket Ideas and Examples That Give Immediate Feedback

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Use exit tickets to check student understanding of what they learned and get immediate feedback on that day's lesson.

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Goal setting is a part of teaching. Each year, you have goals for your students. And as students learn how to work in your class, they'll learn how to set and reach goals as well. Setting goals and working to achieve them is an important skill for students to learn starting in kindergarten. In fact, the process of setting goals is an evidence-based practice, and working toward them has positive impacts for students. It helps students maintain a growth mindset, where they're focused on learning something new and mastering new skills.

Here's our guide for goal setting with students with our favorite classroom resources.

What is a goal?

A goal is a focused aim or result you want to achieve. Eating a bowl of ice cream after dinner is a want. Reading 100 words correctly per minute is a goal. All goals should be SMART:

Specific: What do you want to accomplish?

Measurable: How will you know you achieved your goal?

Attainable: What goals are within your reach?

Relevant: Which goals are important to you? What about the goal is important to you?

Time-bound: How long will you give yourself to reach your goal?

So, some SMART student goals might be:

Kindergarten: I can read 10 sight words now and want to read 20 sight words by winter break.

3rd grade: I know my times tables through 7. I want to know my times tables through 10 in the next 4 weeks.

Middle school: I want to raise my grade in math from a C to a B by the end of the semester.

High school: After I take my SAT prep course, I want to get a 1200 on my SAT in May.

Each of these goals is specific, and the student will know when they accomplish it. They're realistic, important to the student, and can be accomplished within a reasonable time.

How to teach goal setting

Goal setting is something you can incorporate into your classroom all year long. Here are our favorite books, tools, and resources to teach this important skill.

Use picture books

For all students, it's helpful to share books that portray goal setting, the process of wanting something, setting a clear goal, and working toward it. In early elementary grades, Peter's effort in Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats is a classic example of persistently working toward a specific goal. Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall also shows how one character achieves an attainable goal by jumping off the diving board.

For older students, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Young Reader's Edition) by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer chronicles William's work to relieve his village from drought. It includes the sub-goals he works toward along the way, such as researching viable solutions and figuring out how to build a windmill.

A great picture book option for older students is Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story by Paula Yoo. This title is a biography of a diver who set and reached many goals, both physical and academic, along the way to becoming an Olympian. Picture book biographies are often great for teaching goal setting as many revolve around a notable goal.

Learn more: The How and Why of Using Picture Book Biographies in the Classroom

Talk about goals

Make goal setting part of your everyday conversation by talking through your own goals and by weaving these inspirational quotes about goals into your conversation, morning meeting, and reflection.

Learn more: Inspirational Goal-Setting Quotes

Start small

Start with small goals, the kind that can be accomplished in a lesson or two. Have students write their goals on sticky notes and reflect on them as soon as they achieve them. Ring a bell or clap when a student achieves their goal (if the student wants) to celebrate the small wins.

Unpack the goal-setting process with students

This goal-setting worksheet helps students start with their strengths and think through what goal they want to work on. Coach students to be specific when thinking about what they want to get better at. How can they improve at science within the next unit? Or what does it look like to improve in math?

Get it: Goal-setting worksheet

Track progress

Once students have set their goals, it's time to track! Use this goal tracker to help students track their progress. Remind students that progress may not be a straight line, but the goal is to see progress over time.

Get it: Track Your Learning printable

Track and reflect

Another way to track progress is by reflecting quickly on how well a goal was achieved. For elementary students, have them set a goal and then mark if they met their goal or progressed to their goal each day. So, if their goal is to memorize through the 10 times table, but they didn't practice their multiplication, then they would fill in the sad face. The point isn't to make students feel bad, it's to reflect on how our choices and actions impact our ability to meet our goals.

Get it: Daily goal-tracking printable

Graph progress

Use graphing to have students create a record of their growth. Use the graphs to reinforce progress with students and to communicate student progress to parents. This is especially helpful when students are working on goals that are not reflected in test results.

Get it: Goal tracker graph printable

Encourage nonacademic goals too

If you have school or classroom character traits, set goals for how students will demonstrate these traits. This reminds students that they can improve in respect, kindness, patience, and other skills.

Track habits

Creating a habit, like reading 20 pages a day, doing one kind deed each day, or doing 20 push-ups each recess, is a long-term goal. Have students set a goal they want to become a habit and use a habit tracker to complete over the course of a month. At the end of the month, reflect on how repeating an action over and over for 28 to 31 days changes how difficult the action feels.

Get it: Printable habit tracker

Create classroom goals

Another way to model and practice goal setting is to set a goal as a class. Set a goal to master a reading or math skill, contribute acts of kindness, or plan and lead a reading-buddy session with a kindergarten class. Class goals build classroom culture and students' sense of community. Note: You can use the habit tracker to track those classroom goals as well, and take time at the end of the day to reflect on how you met your classroom goal that day.

Plan for longer goals

For middle and high school students who may have a goal that takes more than a few weeks to complete, have them build milestones and mini-goals into their course calendar. Use this editable course syllabus to help students break their big goal into smaller chunks that need to be done each day or week.

Get it: Editable course syllabus

Share assessment data with students

When you get results from assessments, share them with students as a class and individually. Make the conversation about reflection. This is a great time to reflect on what students did well and their next goal.

Celebrate!

We don't mean throw a party. Celebrate when students achieve goals by giving them a round of applause, verbal praise, or another small celebration. Come up with a way to celebrate as a class, a firework hand clap, a chant, or a short dance. The idea is to acknowledge that the student achieved the goal, and celebrate it, while building intrinsic motivation.

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All posts by Samantha Cleaver, PhD, Special Ed & Reading Intervention

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How To Do Goal Setting With Your Students This School Year

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The school year is all about setting and achieving measurable goals. Here's a practical guide to set and achieve goals with students.

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Teaching Young Students How to Reflect on Their Learning

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Early elementary students can identify and articulate their goals through structured reflection on what matters most to them.

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When teachers provide students with multiple ways to show their learning, they can also develop different ways to assess that learning.

Teachers are called to create deeper, more flexible learning opportunities for students to learn at high levels. This often raises questions about how to assess student work, given that student products may range from podcasts to digital storybooks, virtual reality experiences, and published poetry.

To complicate things further, personalized products need to be graded equitably, which means that grades need to reflect mastery of standards and not, for example, the sound quality of the podcast. To simplify the process to incorporate both Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and more equitable grading, we offer the following tips.

5 Strategies for Implementing UDL and Standards-Based Grading

1. Clarify and prioritize your standards. UDL is a framework for designing learning experiences, so that students have options for how they learn, what materials they use, and how they demonstrate their learning as they work toward the same firm goals. The first step in both UDL and equitable grading is to ensure that you have clear and consistent standards that have been intentionally prioritized.

2. Embrace construct relevance as a pathway to student choice. Before designing a lesson, ask yourself, "What do all students have to know or do?" In this process, you will note there are different types of standards. Content standards articulate what students have to know. These standards often start with verbs like explain, communicate, demonstrate, and analyze. Given that there are numerous ways to explain something, this is a perfect opportunity to create a choice board to provide options for students to choose how they want to explain-in writing, with audio or video, or with artistic or multimedia artifacts.

Methods standards, on the other hand, require students to complete specific tasks like writing, solving, and discussing. It's important to recognize that the methods are nonnegotiable and that any flexibility has to be in honor of the goal.

If the standard is "Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence," a standard in Chris's class, all students will produce written arguments. The flexibility lies in the format of the writing-a letter or a speech, for example-as well as the options provided to support the writing process (graphic organizers, writing conferences, etc.), along with the tools used to produce writing (typing or voice-to-text).

3. Unbraid the knot that is academic and nonacademic factors. Often, grades are a combination of academic factors (what a student knows and can do) and nonacademic factors (timeliness, effort, extra credit). As such, they do not paint an accurate picture of where each student is in relation to mastering the standards.

Researchers Marco Muñoz and Thomas Guskey suggest unbraiding the variety of factors that go into traditional grades by reporting and recording student feedback on the product (what they know and can do), the process (timeliness and effort), and the progress (growth in learning). By doing so, teachers are able to paint a complete picture of the student academically and behaviorally without any one factor conflating with the other in some sort of cryptic average. Simply put, there is clarity in all aspects of academics and academic behaviors.

When students simply assign themselves a desired or perceived letter grade or percentage they believe they deserve, learning and ownership are minimal, and barriers to true and sustained engagement remain. However, when students work to assess themselves on academic standards, they are forced to interact with the standards in meaningful ways, review and analyze exemplars, track and reflect on their learning, and determine next steps for continued growth and learning.

5. Communicate clearly to all stakeholders. When teachers begin to report student learning in relation to specific standards as opposed to traditional assignment-by-assignment grading, families can quickly become confused and left unsure of how their students are doing in class because they, as students, lived in traditional grading systems. So, it becomes essential that individual teachers and/or schools have a robust, detailed, consistent, and widespread communication plan that provides multiple means of representation and considers the varied languages spoken so that all stakeholders have equal access to improved understanding.

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Crafting Fair Assessments for Flexible Assignments

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When teachers provide students with multiple ways to show their learning, they can also develop different ways to assess that learning.

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Proof that student self-assessment moves learning forward

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Student self-assessment helps kids reach their learning goals. Approaching it with intention can save teachers time and ensure success.

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In addition to improving relationships, praise from teachers can boost students' confidence and self-esteem.

Praise is a powerful expression of gratitude that can nurture relationships, improve well-being, and activate learning. Being intentional in how we use praise versus corrections/constructive feedback can make all the difference (both personally and professionally).

Here's a thought exercise I offer in the book Evolving with Gratitude: "Think about a learning environment that you have been in recently. It can be your own classroom or one that you visited as an instructional coach, administrator, etc. Scan the space, and see all of those wonderful faces. Think about all the things you can thank them for: actively engaging in learning, offering a warm smile, helping others, and so much more. You continue scanning the room, and then you get to that one kid. This kid challenges you. Maybe they can't sit still, they can't stop talking, they show up late, they don't turn in assignments, or all of the above."

Behavior is communication, and what if this individual needs your praise more than you can imagine? What if this is someone who really needs to feel seen, heard, and genuinely appreciated? Often, the kids (and adults) who challenge us the most are the ones who need us the most.

Earning my psychology degree, I was taught that we should acknowledge positive behavior six times more than we acknowledge negative behavior. That's a lot of positive reinforcement! Experts don't always agree on the exact ratio, but regardless of the context- business, romantic relationships, or learning communities -experts do agree that we want to overwhelmingly spotlight the good. So, why don't we do this naturally?

BARRIERS TO OFFERING MORE PRAISE

We have negativity bias. As humans, we are wired with a negativity bias, meaning that even in the best of times, we notice the negative exponentially more than the positive. Considered an adaptive evolutionary function, negativity bias served a critical purpose thousands of years ago, helping our ancestors make choices to survive. Negative emotions also serve a purpose and can help keep us safe, but negativity bias can have us overwhelmingly focused on the negative in unproductive ways.

We have a tendency to miss the quiet people among us. What about those who keep their heads down and are (sadly) easy to overlook? When we gather in groups, there are often people (kids and adults) who tend to fly under the radar. They don't cause a problem, and they quietly go about their business (even though they have plenty to offer to others). How often do they hear their names called? How often do these individuals feel seen, heard, and genuinely appreciated?

Our jobs involve helping others improve. Another thing that could be holding us back is something that I consider an occupational hazard. Given our profound role as educators, we are dedicated to continuous improvement. No matter what our role is, teacher, principal, or superintendent, we want everything to be the best it can be, so naturally, with the best of intentions, we want to point out room for improvement.

As tempting as it is to share every opportunity for growth, it's important to remember that a little constructive feedback can go a long way, and positive feedback is what motivates us to continue to improve. Easier said than done. Even when we are being intentional about seeing the good in others, it can be tough, but we all have strengths. Shining a light on those strengths and doing it often can make all the difference.

TIPS FOR HIGHLIGHTING THE POSITIVES AND PROMOTING GROWTH

So what would this look like for academics? Let's look at writing as an example. Raise your hand if you can remember being a student and getting a piece of your writing returned with massive mark-ups, possibly even in the dreaded red marker! Here are some tips you may want to try:

Teach everyone the importance of positive feedback. Don't keep it a secret, model it, and gently hold each other accountable (kids and adults).

Teach learners to give peer feedback, both positive and constructive. Use rubrics, checklists, and sentence stems so that everyone can provide timely, high-quality feedback.

Leverage a workshop model to celebrate successes in the moment and give real-time feedback.

Don't correct everything. (I know-yikes!) Instead, provide targeted, actionable feedback on what's most important for the current learning goal(s). Bonus: Once high-quality peer review is in place, fellow learners tend to catch mistakes, which saves us time.

Is focusing on the good easy? For most, myself included, no, at least not at first. Is this highly effective and worth it? Absolutely!

If increasing praise for your entire class or team seems overwhelming, start small and build up to it. Pick one person who is struggling or goes unnoticed, and focus on acknowledging their successes more (social behavior and academic performance). There is no one way to do this, which is why this is an art informed by science.

Note to self: Be aware of unconscious negatives. Yes, nasty glare and eye rolling, I'm talking about you.

Honestly, are all the relationships in my life perfect all the time? No! But being intentional in focusing on authentic, heartfelt, and specific positive feedback has improved every relationship in my life. And when things get tough, personally or professionally, I remind myself, the best way to change someone else's behavior is to change my own behavior first.

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The Art (and Science) of Using Praise for Improvement

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In addition to improving relationships, praise from teachers can boost students' confidence and self-esteem. Praise is a powerful expression of gratitude that can nurture relationships, improve well-being, and activate learning. Being intentional in how we use praise versus corrections/constructive feedback can make all the difference (both personally and professionally).

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By: Jennifer Pieratt
Early elementary school students are not known to nuance their thoughts-whether it's "I hate broccoli," "Winning was awesome!" or "Monopoly is always boring." In fact, trying to picture seven-year-olds engaging in critical self-reflection, peer evaluation, and assessment is... tough. Luckily, PBL can help us out with that. Accountability, benchmarks, and pacing are often seen as dirty words in PBL when assessment is both reassuring and empowering for students. For instance, clear benchmarks can serve as safeguards for teachers as well as their class to know that the final showcase won't flop. Moreover, by using agency rubrics, for instance, young students can learn to associate effort with growth, gaining the confidence to rebound from setbacks. So, how do we even begin teaching self-reflection, peer evaluation, and assessment in early elementary? Here are five key steps to start seeing them in action!

1. Talk about why the growth mindset matters.

"Growth" and "mindset" are big words in the mouths of seven-year-olds. That's why we need to demystify them with engaging activities and down-to-earth models. After a minute or two of silent brainstorming, initiate a " Fishbowl"; one inner circle of students asks questions about what a growth mindset implies and shares their ideas while the outer circle listens carefully to the opinions presented. Then, you can show them the " Austin's Butterfly " video, in which Ron Berger elicits kind, specific, and helpful feedback from early elementary kids to improve a scientific drawing. Divide students into small groups to discuss why the "growth mindset" matters and have them synthesize their reflections on paper.

2. Show your students how to self-reflect at each project benchmark.

Okay, so now that your students know why it matters to have a growth mindset, they need to figure out how to implement that, starting with themselves. Give them the tools they need to self-reflect easily and in-depth. For instance, some students might like to color where they are on the student rubric and explain why they've placed themselves there. Others might prefer to use emojis to reflect their progress. And, of course, your less visual students will definitely enjoy recording themselves, vlogging, or using Seesaw and other digital tools to capture their progress.

3. Prepare your class for peer evaluation.

One big step is getting your students to critique each other-without hurting their friends' feelings, nor lavishing each other with kind but baseless compliments. Early elementary students won't master critique right away, and that's okay! Help them out with phrases inspired from the "good, better, best-never let it rest" mantra. Encouraging them to frame their sentences using "I like that you..." or "It would be better if you..." is an excellent place to start.

You can also ask your class to use personalized sticky notes to point out the nice and not-so-nice aspects of a project by placing them on the product itself.

4. Design the perfect rubric for your students.

It's time to start thinking backwards. That's right! Understanding by Design is all about planning rubrics with the end goal in mind, whether that be what students comprehend or how they can apply their new knowledge to real life. Obviously, assessment criteria should logically stem from these objectives and help develop your students' growth mindset and agency. Make sure that each benchmark in a given project has its own small rubric which students can use to self-reflect. In other words, each time they reach a new touchstone, your class should encounter a rubric for learning rather than of learning.

5. Turn the tables! Ask your class to create its own success criteria.

Let's be honest, rubrics aren't exactly student-friendly. The frightening amount of columns, unfamiliar words used, and off-putting fonts would throw off anybody who doesn't teach for a living, let alone early elementary students. Ask your class to 'translate' a selected rubric or create their own from scratch using "I can" statements.

Simple sentences accompanied by "Not yet," "Most of the time," and "Always" can go a long way in helping students know what teachers expect from them and engage in earnest self-reflection.

Self-reflection, peer evaluation, and assessment are easy to teach in early elementary with these five tricks. When we set students up to learn these three key skills at a young age, we can guarantee their future success in their professional and personal lives. By scaffolding their development and asking them to critically evaluate themselves and each other, we can ensure that tomorrow's adults are self-aware citizens with a special talent for giving and receiving critique.

For more, see:

Jenny Pieratt, Ph.D. is a Progressive Educator, Author and Speaker. She is also the Founder and President of CraftED Curriculum . You can find Jenny on Twitter at @crafted_jennyp
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What Self-Reflection, Peer Evaluation, and Assessment Looks Like in Action in Early Elementary

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By Jenny Pieratt - An ed leader shares five key steps to begin teaching self-reflection, peer evaluation, and assessment in early elementary.

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Benchmark tests are often given to students with no context, but they can inspire meaningful conversations about learning.

Hero Images on Offset / Shutterstock

Imagine sitting in your sixth-grade classroom at the beginning of the school year. Your teacher tells you that you are about to take a very important test and to try your best. You sit for over 45 minutes, answering many questions, most of which you don't know how to answer. After the test, you are given a score on the screen with no additional information. Your teacher asks you to take out a book and to silently read while others finish around you. Once everyone finishes, students are instructed to complete the next lesson of the day on the board about social studies. There's no talk about this test or its significance until the next time it's given midyear.

Unfortunately, this is the experience of many students when taking benchmark tests. Students sit for long periods through an adaptive test that challenges students at their "just-right" level. This means that students miss many of the questions, since they're just out of reach. The algorithm figures out students' exact levels in reading and mathematics. While artificial intelligence can be very helpful, the scores generated don't mean anything without context.

Reimagining Data Collection

In Warwick, Rhode Island, the Curriculum Team for the public school system realized that the above experience isn't a best teaching practice. Students thrive on feedback that is timely and specific. Asking students to take a grueling benchmark test three times a year without understanding the "why" behind it is an exercise in futility.

Why not challenge students to set goals for themselves once they understand the score and their strengths and weaknesses within tested domains? The team put their hypothesis to the test and started having data chats with students in schools K-8.

The concept behind the data chat is simple: Sit with a student 1:1 for a few minutes, nothing too long or complicated. Show the student their score, explain the score in detail, and ask the following questions: What makes you proud about your score? What would you like to improve? How will you achieve that goal? (Provide some examples of ways to improve if students have trouble coming up with ideas.)

We also invite parents and guardians into the conversation by sending home paper copies of their student's scores and explanations of what they mean.

Addressing Teachers' Concerns

Some teachers in our district were leery of this process at first, imagining that it would be very time-consuming. However, they were able to enlist support professionals within the building to either help with data chats or work with the rest of the class while they had conferences with students.

At the middle school level, some teachers got creative and had students fill in their information first, before having conferences, shortening the time needed for data chats. You can see a sample of a middle school data chat form. We use i-Ready for our benchmarking K-8, but this form can be adapted for any type of benchmarking assessment.

Teachers were also concerned about speaking to students who struggled with the test. Some did not want to have difficult conversations and possibly hurt their students' self-esteem. However, teachers soon realized that students weren't as concerned about their scores as they were about how to improve. Students not only set goals for themselves but typically wanted to reach for stretch goals to help close the gap between their scores and those of others around them. The students who struggled the most seemed even more motivated to work to improve their scores throughout the year.

The Results of Data Chats

Teachers have already started to see the data chats pay off-students are beginning to take ownership of their learning and are working hard on the "MyPath" work in i-Ready, which helps prepare them for the next benchmarking test and related standards.

Schools in the district have created extrinsic rewards for students according to the number of MyPath lessons passed during the school year. After doing a correlation analysis, we found that students who focused on the MyPath lessons increased their state testing scores considerably. For example, three of our elementary schools were able to increase their ELA state testing scores by 12 percent, 14 percent, and 17 percent. We have not seen growth this high since the start of state testing. In math, students increased their scores by 11 percent, 8 percent, and 10 percent at three elementary schools; 9 percent at one of our middle schools; and a whopping 21 percent at another elementary school-the highest growth rate in the state.

Keeping these positive results in mind, principals have created rewards that best fit their schools. Some are tying the MyPath lessons to field day and fun assemblies; others are rewarding students with luncheons and pizza parties. Regardless, we are thrilled to see the momentum that has been created with data chats. The intrinsic motivation that comes from individual goal-setting conferences is creating a sense of engagement and a desire to work harder during the school day.

We must give students feedback and clarity on the work that we are asking them to do. We need this feedback and clarity as adults and would be distressed if we were asked to take a major test without any feedback or explanation about the results afterward. Imagine taking an IQ test and finding out your score but never being given a comparison with an average IQ. Or, imagine taking a college entrance exam and never hearing back about the score or application.

If our goal as educators is to prepare our students for college, careers, and the real world, we have to take steps to make our educational system mirror what happens outside of classroom walls. Setting goals is an important part of life, and we can teach our students how to set and work toward them with steps that are concrete and attainable. All students need is our guidance to start them off. Data chats are a simple way to make this happen.

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Using Student Data to Inspire Goal-Setting

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Using student data to inspire meaningful conversations about goal-setting inspires K-8 students to think about the why behind their learning.

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Set Up for Success: Goal-Setting Activities for Elementary Students

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Discover goal-setting activities for students that inspire confidence and growth. Explore strategies, SMART goals, and fun classroom ideas!

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Goal setting for students & kids promotes motivation, confidence & academic success by providing clear targets to strive for.

Effective goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant & time-bound guiding children toward success.

Encouraging reflection & adjustment helps maintain progress & fosters lifelong learning habits.

Setting and achieving goals is a vital part of being human. If we're not working toward something, we can struggle with feelings of uncertainty and a lack of direction (Klinger & Cox, 2011).

If we're not taught goal setting as students, it can be tough to get started later in life. But luckily, goal setting is a practice that operates on a set of specific skills, and these skills are relatively easy to teach.

Whether you're a parent, educator, or another caring adult, you can help children learn how to decide on their goals, define them, and track their progress.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our five positive psychology tools for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

Why Teaching Goal Setting Early On Matters

Setting goals is a vital practice that can benefit anyone with a dream or a vision for their future. Young people who are just starting out in life are at a particularly opportune time to start building their goal-setting skills.

These skills serve them throughout their lives, and building them early gives youth an introduction to self-regulation: controlling their actions in the short term to manifest the future they want.

Parents can encourage goal setting in their children - and absolutely should do so - but the importance of this skill justifies its inclusion in our schools' curriculum. A curriculum that includes setting goals teaches kids the mechanics and techniques of goal setting, gives them early wins, and helps them develop belief in themselves.

Anyone who has worked with children will recognize the importance of self-belief and self-confidence for early life development.

Understanding Relevant Psychological Theories for Student Goals

Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of goal setting, both for the children who practice it and for the schools and systems that encourage it (O'Neill, 2000).

There are two stacking benefits when teachers practice good goal setting:

1. Successful goal setting is modeled for students.

2. With effective goal setting in place, the school will become even better at facilitating learning.

Motivation theory tells us that humans are naturally drawn to achieving goals, but whether a person achieves their goal depends on several factors, like the goal, the situation, and the type of motivation (Urhahne & Wijnia, 2023).

The presence of intrinsic motivation, an internal incentive to do an activity, instead of extrinsic motivation, an external incentive to do an activity, makes a person more likely to achieve their goal (Kuvaas, 2018).

The goal and the situation are important, but perhaps the most important factor is the self. When a person believes in themself and their own ability to effect change in their life (known as self-efficacy; Bandura, 1977), they are far more likely to follow through in goal striving (Niazi et al., 2013).

Cultivating a growth mindset, the belief that characteristics and abilities can be developed, can also be a key factor in the success kids achieve throughout their lifespan (Combette et al., 2024; Yeager & Dweck, 2021).

To foster a growth mindset and enhance a child's self-efficacy in goal attainment, parents and educators can offer the child opportunities to practice setting, striving toward, and achieving goals. According to self-efficacy theory, gaining experiences of success like this is the best way to increase belief in one's own abilities to do something (Bandura, 1977).

3 Goal-Setting Activities for Younger Kids (Ages 5-10)

Younger kids are at a great age to start learning how to set goals. However, the activities need to be simple and straightforward to keep young kids on task.

1. How to set and achieve goals

This video from Bluejack Kids is an excellent introduction to the process. It's broken down into easy steps, explaining goal setting in basic terms with some helpful visual cues. It will provide a great, kid-friendly introduction to goal setting.

How to set and achieve goals

Once you've introduced your kids or students to goal setting, try these two very basic worksheets with your younger kids.

2. Student goal-setting worksheet

This is one of the most straightforward worksheets out there, making it a great choice for young children.

The Student Goal Setting Worksheet includes sections for the student's name and the current date, then poses these five prompts:

I am good at ...

I am bad at ...

What will I improve?

How will I make these improvements?

If my plan doesn't work, what will I do?

Working through this activity will help them start thinking about what goal setting is as well as what direction they'd like to go with their goals.

You will likely need to walk your students through these prompts, so be prepared to provide assistance as needed.

3. My goals

This exercise is a little more intensive, so you might want to try the previous activities before this one, but it's a helpful way for students to practice identifying and planning for their goals.

It only requires them to set two goals, and they should be given ample room to write them down, although they may need your help with this.

After they have identified two goals, they must answer the following prompts for each of them:

This goal is important because ...

Steps I'll take to reach this goal are ...

It's quick and easy, typically taking less than 10 minutes.

3 Goal-Setting Activities for Middle & High-School Students (Ages 11-18)

For middle school and high school kids, there is a broader range of options that are developmentally appropriate.

If you're a teacher of middle schoolers or high schoolers, these activities and worksheets will provide you with plenty of options for adding goal setting into the curriculum.

1. Goal execution plan

The Goal Execution Plan template is an excellent resource for older students due to the considerations it includes and the level of detail.

It includes space for up to three goals, with five steps per goal, and provides the following columns for each step:

Action steps

Date start

Responsible (who is responsible for it)

Starting metrics (metrics measure goal progress; this is the starting point for these measures)

Budget (if any)

Notes

Final metrics (endpoint for the measures of goal progress)

Date end

You may not need all of the columns, but it's helpful to have prompts to encourage deep reflection about each goal.

2. Simple goal-setting worksheet

This is another simple worksheet that can be used with younger or older students to help them figure out the basics of setting and working toward their goals.

The worksheet provides space for students to answer the following prompts:

My goal is ...

Goal completion date

Steps to reach my goal (space for four)

Two things that will help me reach my goal (space for two)

I will know I have reached my goal because ...

If using this worksheet with younger students, you might need to guide them or provide examples, but older students should have no trouble completing it.

3. Action for goals worksheet

This worksheet is a great reminder for students that setting goals on its own won't get you anywhere. You need to set mini goals and identify action steps on the way to your larger goal.

The worksheet provides an example of a larger goal and the action steps that will lead to it.

Overall goal: I will learn to play a musical instrument proficiently in five years.

I will determine which instrument I would like to play.

I will find a tutor/teacher and begin taking lessons weekly.

I will practice daily for 60 minutes.

Using this as a template, students are given the space to write down three goals and come up with three action steps per goal.

Completing this worksheet will help students get in the right frame of mind for goal setting and goal striving and keep them cognizant of the effort required to actually meet their goals after setting them.

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How to Facilitate the Process in the Classroom

Implementing good goal-setting learning in the classroom doesn't have to be overwhelming. With a little thoughtfulness and planning, you can help your students get started on building these vital skills. The key thing to remember is to set yourself up for getting good student engagement.

According to Education World (n.d.), there are six key tips to being successful in setting and achieving goals:

1. Create goals that are clear and measurable.

2. Draft a specific plan of action for each goal.

3. Review your goals daily and use visualization techniques to see yourself achieving them.

4. Reflect regularly on your progress toward achieving your goals.

5. If needed, revise your plan of action.

6. Celebrate your achievements!

If this list looks familiar, it's likely because you've heard about SMART goals. Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals is a tried and true method of achieving valued outcomes, and it can easily be taught to children and youth.

The research on this topic provides some extra tips and tricks for maximizing the effectiveness of goal-setting curricula.

Provide students with limits (both upper and lower) when setting goals to teach students how to be realistic (these limits can be subject to change).

Practice goal setting with games to make it fun and keep the pressure low.

Give students focused assistance with assessing goal difficulty through one-on-one goal-setting conferences (Schunk, 1990).

Encourage students to write down their goals rather than simply creating them and leaving them floating around in their minds (Matthews, 2015).

Make extensive use of models in the classroom to show students how it works.

Teach and model evidence-backed goal-setting strategies (like SMART goals) to boost chances of success, and give students feedback on their progress.

Instill broader learning strategies as well as focused goal-setting skills that will build students' overall abilities (Schunk, 2003).

Use positive reinforcement to reward and encourage effective goal-setting behaviors.

3 Tips for Parents to Support Goal Achievement at Home

As parents, you have an important role to play in encouraging your kids to strive toward their goals both in and out of the classroom. Sometimes kids will find it easy to set and achieve goals in one area but difficult in another.

With the tips and activities below, you can facilitate setting and achieving goals, both in school and at home.

1. Make a family bucket list

Making a bucket list is a wonderful way to set goals, and this activity involves the whole family in the goal-setting practice. It allows you to both model goal setting and encourage your children to practice it themselves, all at once.

Here's how to do it:

Get your family together and collect a piece of paper and some markers.

As a family, brainstorm a list of accomplishments, experiences, or achievement goals that you want to work toward as a family over the next year.

At the end of the year, look back over your list and see what you've accomplished. Celebrate the goals you accomplished as a family.

Encourage your children to use online tools like Trello or Evernote to help create this bucket list or to create one for themselves.

2. Draw a wheel of life

The wheel of life is a fun way to introduce goal setting in different areas of life. It will show your children that you don't need to keep your goals limited to school or work; you can set goals in all life domains.

Follow these steps to create and use a wheel of fortune:

Draw a circle and divide it into even segments (like you're cutting a pizza into slices).

On each segment, write one of the important life domains; for example, you might write "Family," "Friends," "School/Work," "Hobbies," "Health," and "Fun."

For each domain, have your child write out the goals they would like to accomplish. Make sure they keep the goals to a specific timeline (e.g., a month, three months, or a year).

Make sure to help them keep track of their progress throughout the timeline they chose.

3. Play Three Stars and a Wish

This is a fun and easy game that you can play with your students or your children to help them start thinking about their goals.

It's a simple activity with simple rules:

Ask your children to come up with three "stars," or things that they do well. The sky is the limit for this activity. The thing they're good at can be anything from a subject in school to a quality that makes them a good friend.

Once students have their three stars identified, have them create a "wish" to complement their stars. Their wish will be something that they would like to get better or more consistent at doing, and they can pick anything that is meaningful to them. Again, they are only limited by their imagination.

This activity will help them come up with important goals and also help them develop the self-belief they need to succeed.

17 Tools To Increase Motivation and Goal Achievement

These 17 Motivation & Goal Achievement Exercises [PDF] contain all you need to help others set meaningful goals, increase self-drive, and experience greater accomplishment and life satisfaction.
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More Helpful Tools From PositivePsychology.com

To learn more about goal setting, its importance, and its benefits, refer to some of our other articles on the subject:

For more helpful tools on teaching goal setting to kids, check out these worksheets from PositivePsychology.com's master resource list:

The Abstraction Worksheet can help older kids think about what behavior they'd like to set a goal to change and guide them in visualizing this desired future state.

This worksheet will walk students through setting SMART goals.

The G Stands for Goal worksheet is a great resource for older kids and students who want to think through setting a grand goal and breaking it into smaller subgoals.

If you're looking for more science-based ways to help others reach their goals, this collection contains 17 validated motivation & goals-achievement tools for practitioners. Use them to help others turn their dreams into reality by applying the latest science-based behavioral change techniques.

A Take-Home Message

Goal setting is a vital practice to start early with children, and fortunately there are so many good resources to foster it effectively. Whether you're working with very young children who need fun and engaging games to get them started or older children who are ready for more intensive goal-setting practice, there are tools available that can guide the process.

The dividends of building goal-setting skills in early life are well worth the upfront effort. By equipping young children with these tools, educators and parents alike can foster a foundation for lifelong self-directed growth.

We hope you found this piece to be a useful starting point for teaching goal setting to youth.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our five positive psychology tools for free.
ED: Updated July 2025

Frequently Asked Questions

Teaching goal setting to a child is straightforward; it just requires some planning and a little bit of patience. First, you need to explain goal setting and why we do it. Once the child has a basic understanding, show them an example of effective goal setting. Finally, walk them through setting a goal that they want to accomplish. When they see how it works and try it for themselves, they'll be ready to start setting their own goals independently.

SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. A good SMART goal for a student might look like this:

"I want to raise all of my grades to a B or above within the next semester. I will see a tutor after school two days a week and spend four extra hours studying per week to accomplish this goal."

Kids can start learning about goals as early as three or four. The goals will need to be age appropriate and short term for them to start building understanding. Once they understand goals, you can start teaching SMART goals and more advanced goal-setting and goal-striving techniques between ages five and 10.

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