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I plan to study how personal learning goals can increase academic achievement.

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Effective Goal Setting

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Resources >> Browse Articles >> Fostering Study & Homework Skills

Dorit Sasson

The process of setting goals allows students to choose where they want to go in school and what they want to achieve. By knowing what they want to achieve, they know what they have to concentrate on and improve. Goal setting gives students long-term vision and short-term motivation.

Having sharp, clearly defined goals, which students can measure, will allow them to take pride in accomplishing those goals. They can see clear forward progress in what might have seemed a long drawn out process.

By setting goals students can:

1.improve their academic performance

2.increase their motivation to achieve

3.increase pride and satisfaction in performance

4.improve their self-confidence

Now wouldn't you like to see your students become better believers of their academic abilities? And remember, goal setting is an ongoing process which can (and should) be done all throughout the school year.

Goal Setting Helps Self-Confidence

By setting goals and measuring their achievements, students are able to see what they have done and what they are capable of. Seeing their results gives the confidence and assurance that they need to believe they can achieve higher goals.

Basics of Effective Goal Setting

Express goals positively: "To improve my spelling" is a much better goal than "Don't spell with so many mistakes."

Be accurate: If students set an accurate goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that achievement can be measured and can be satisfied at achieving it.

Set Priorities: When students have several goals, give each a priority. This helps them avoid feeling overwhelmed and helps their attention to the more important ones.

Write goals down to make them more meaningful.

Keep Goals Small: Urge students to keep their immediate goals small and achievable.

Set Goals Students Have Control Over: There is nothing worse than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond the students' control.

Set specific measurable goals: If students consistently fail to meet a measurable goal, then they can adjust it or analyze the reason for failure and take appropriate action.

Start 2010 on the right foot with a greater understanding of how your students can create achievable goals and objectives.

What are you waiting for?

Try it!

Related Reads:

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effective goal setting students fostering study & homework skills benefits articles

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The process of setting goals allows students to choose where they want to go in school and what they want to achieve. By knowing what they want to achieve, they know what they have to concentrate on and improve. Goal setting gives students long-term vision and short-term motivation.

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Student Goal Setting

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Teach: Student Goal-Setting and Reflection

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Informed consent should take the form of a dialogue that mutually shapes the research and the results (Mills, 2011, p. 30).

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My students love Kid President! This is a great way to introduce goal setting.

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As described by Sagor (1992), “Action research is conducted by people who want to do something to improve their situation,” (p. 7).

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- NWEA
- mastering math facts
- mastering sight words
- reading level
- progress on XtraMath

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- improve academic performance
- increase motivation
- increase pride in performance
- improve self-confidence

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Which content area will be the focus of my goal setting research?

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How will my students and I keep track of their goals?

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How will I motivate my students to set goals?

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I need to get inform consent from my studets. As described by Mills (2011), “Informed consent ensures that research participants enter the research of their free will and with an understanding of the study and any possible dangers that may arise,” (p. 30).

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I need to carefully collect and analyze the data. According to Mills (2011), “Ensuring the accuracy of your data is a central concern of action research,” (p. 34).

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How to Encourage Goal Setting for Students

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As a teacher, you regularly think about goal setting for students. From improving skills and meeting standards to being kind and putting the darn caps back on the glue sticks, there's always something to strive towards. Have you tapped into the power of setting goals with students, though? Research spanning decades shows that setting students goals improves both motivation and achievement. Goal setting encourages a growth mindset. It also supports the development of skills students need to be prepared for their future careers.

There's no shortage of teachers doing innovative work around goal setting for students. We've compiled some of our favorite resources into this handy guide for you.

What is a goal, anyways?

For younger students, you may need to start by distinguishing between a goal and a wish. I wish for a giant bowl of ice cream every evening around 8 PM, but my goal this year is to stay hydrated by drinking 100 ounces of water each day. Sigh. A read aloud like Froggy Rides a Bike by Jonathan London can help make this distinction clear. Froggy wishes he could own a cool trick bicycle, but his goal is to learn to ride a bike-which it turns out he's able to achieve with persistence and despite a few classic "more red in the face than green" moments.

For all students, it's helpful to share books that portray goal setting. In early elementary grades, Peter's effort in Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats is a classic example of persistently working towards a specific goal. Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller presents a nice variety of goals, from learning to read to helping someone each day. However, upper elementary and middle school, 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 towards 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.

Be SMART about it

Helping students hone their goal setting skills makes it more likely they will meet them. SMART goals have been a popular tool for years and many teachers have successfully implemented versions of this practice with their students. Consider these tactics:

Unpack the goal-setting process with students

SOURCE: Scholastic Top Teaching Blog

This lesson plan from Scholastic includes a free downloadable poster and graphic organizer. We love the brainstorm activity and interactive whiteboard sort for distinguishing specific and vague goals. These could easily be adapted for younger students based on the examples you choose.

You can also check out our free goal-setting printable here.

Start small

SOURCE: 3rd Grade Thoughts

This blog post from 3rd Grade Thoughts includes a simple-but-powerful anchor chart and a straightforward system for students to publicly identify short-term goals. Students in this classroom work on " WOW goals " to be completed "Within One Week."

Encourage nonacademic goals, too

In this lesson plan about character-based goals, students work with partners to discuss goals related to specific virtues such as respect, enthusiasm, and patience. They make specific plans to upgrade their behavior and evaluate their own progress.

Don't stop now: keep track and reflect

Raise your hand if you sometimes add items to your to-do list just for the satisfaction of crossing them off. Progress monitoring systems are motivating, and they are a crucial component of goal-setting work. Consider:

Visual tracking systems

SOURCE: The Brown Bag Teacher

This post from The Brown Bag Teacher describes a star chart for keeping track of filled-out reading logs. This system displays progress in a concrete way and could easily be adapted to other goals.

Goal-setting apps

There's an app for that! This roundup of goal setting and tracking apps from Emerging Ed Tech gives you plenty of options for taking that to do list up a notch.

Sharing assessment data with students

This video from EL Education demonstrates how teachers can make the assessment data you're collecting anyways more meaningful to students. This teacher discusses DRA data with students to help them reflect upon their progress and establish updated goals.

It's time to celebrate!

Who doesn't love a chance to be recognized for an achievement? Acknowledging students' attainment of goals is an important component of classroom goal setting. Consider these ideas:

Make celebration a habit

Nurture a "hooray" classroom culture by adopting the perspective of teacher Kevin Parr, who noticed an uptick in student motivation when he simply made a daily effort to provide more nonverbal and verbal recognition.

Recognize students in writing and in public

Send students "Happy Mail", as described by Responsive Classroom. Use written awards or notes to give individualized and authentic positive feedback and publicly share them for added recognition.

Introduce fun classroom traditions

If your school allows balloons, we love Dr. Michele Borba's suggestion to put small rewards-or reward "coupons"-inside balloons and write a goal on the outside of each one. Make a big deal out of popping a balloon when a goal is met.
How do you go about goal setting for students in your classroom? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Plus, check out this goal-setting bulletin board kit.

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How to Do Goal Setting With Your Students This School Year

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As a teacher, you regularly think about goal setting for students. From improving skills and meeting standards to being kind and putting the darn caps back on the glue sticks, there's always something to strive towards. Have you tapped into the power of setting goals with students, though?

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Great ideas for goal setting!

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Hello Friend!

In my growth minded classroom student goal setting and reflection is routine practice. Prior planning, achievement, and reflection of goals make new challenges even more achievable since students have a clear understanding that their continued efforts will lead to success.

Goals come in many forms; they may be purely academic, social, or goals even may have to do with character building. All students need to be explicitly taught how to choose, set, and reflect on goals. It is not an instinctive skill, even for most adults.

Even our youngest learners can have a clear understanding that a goal is just an area of weakness we need to strengthen and celebrate improvement!

For older students, you may want to determine the difference between performance goals and learning goals.

Goal types defined by Carol Dweck:

Performance Goal: a goal that focuses on demonstrating tasks, content knowledge, skills or abilities, and often how the acquired skill or task will be judged in comparison to others (getting an A in French class).

Learning goal: a goal that focuses on overall learning, particularly how mastery of a skill or concept will develop understanding and ability to subsequent learning and challenges (being able to speak French).

Students who set learning goals focus on true mastery- a deep understanding from which students can draw conclusions, connect ideas, and build relationships to new skills and concepts. Learning oriented goals help students develop grit and dedication to learning over time, as opposed to performance goals, which are more about proving intelligence or ability on isolated tasks.

Research tells us that while both types of goals help students achieve in school, learning goals lead them to greater understanding and enhance their ability to apply what they've learned in new ways in future challenges.

Why set goals?

During explicit teaching of growth mindset lessons students learn that our abilities are not fixed, that our brains are malleable and can grow with determination and grit. When students understand that their intelligence is not limited, goal setting is the pathway to their success.

A goal is an outcome, something that will make a difference as a result of achieving it. It can't be too ambitious to be out of reach, but also not so simple that it does not challenge. A goal has to be realistic with a stretch, requiring effort and focus to achieve it. That's why goals need timeframes and measurable action steps along the way so that we can keep track of progress and make adjustments as necessary.

By setting goals, measuring and celebrating their achievements, students are able to see what they have done and what they are capable of. Seeing their results gives the confidence and assurance that they need to believe they can achieve higher goals.

SMART Goals

Setting specific and attainable goals can be a difficult task for some students. Even with explicit directions and extensive modeling, many students will write vague and generic goals like: I want to read harder books or get better at math.

If SMART goal setting is new for your students, take time to clearly model and discuss each part of the SMART framework. Expect this process to be a series of lessons the first time through.

Make an anchor chart clearly defining and giving examples of:

What is specific vs vague?

What is measurable vs non measurable?

What does attainable mean? Will this be too hard, too easy, or make me stretch a bit?

What is relevant? Is this important for my long term growth?

What is timely?

Many teachers have goal setting success when students focus on a behavior goal as their first SMART goal, as it is a bit more tangible to them. In addition, if you are starting goal setting at the beginning of the year, this is another opportunity to establish expected behaviors with your students.

Here is a great SMART goal setting informative video (appropriate for upper elementary students)

Using a SMART goal graphic organizer will help plan and make goal setting easier for students.

Although your students should choose individual goals, collaborating with peers about their specific goal and action steps can help with the process and build accountability.

Once you have worked through the planning process of goals and action steps, students can write their goals and action steps on a desk visual reminder and/or transfer their goal to the My SMART Goal paragraph to hang in the classroom.

Celebrations

No matter what type of goals your students are achieving, find a way to celebrate their success. It could be as simple as a shout out or sticker, a positive note of encouragement, a visual representation on a designated bulletin board, allowing them time to share their goal reflections with their peers, etc.

Students should have a tangible way to feel accomplished which will lead to motivation to take action on new goals. In addition, other students can feel encouraged that their peers have similar struggles and have met them with success over failure.

Included in my Goal Setting for Students resource are goal setting read aloud book suggestions, notes for the teacher, teaching posters, many options of Growth Mindset goal recording sheets, SMART goal planning & recording sheets, goal reflections, goal pennants, and student award certificates. >>>click the image below to see more!

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Hello Friend! In my growth minded classroom student goal setting and reflection is routine practice. Prior planning, achievement, and reflection of goals make new challenges even more achievable since students have a clear understanding that their continued efforts will lead to success.

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How to Help Students Set Goals

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Now is the perfect time to teach students the importance of setting . This is an important life skill students need to learn. While young students may not be planning for college just yet, they can learn the importance of setting and achieving new year goals.

Here are 10 tips to help students set goals for the new year.

1. Define the Word "Goal"

Make sure students know what the word "goal" means. Younger students may think it refers to a sporting event, so use that prior knowledge as a base when explaining the meaning you're referring to. Tell students that when an athlete makes a goal, it is the end result of their hard work. Webster's Dictionary defines the word goal as "something that you are trying to do or achieve." Use this definition to help you explain the meaning of the word.

2. Teach the Importance of Setting Goals

Once students know the meaning of the word "goal," now it's time to teach them the importance of setting a goal. To help you do this, read the following to your students:

Setting a goal will:

Improve your confidence.

Help you make better decisions.

Give you motivation in life.

Explain to students how powerful setting a goal and achieving it can be. You can say something like:
I want to take my children to Disney World, but in order to do that, I have to go on a budget. This means that I cannot go to Starbucks every morning and buy coffee, or go out to lunch with my friends. I have to save money so that my family can afford to go on a family vacation to Disney World.
This example shows students that you can sacrifice something you like, for a positive outcome. In this case the students will see that you had to plan your budget, and put money aside in order for your family to go to Disney World.

3. Set Realistic Goals

Help your students set small, achievable goals that can be achieved quickly. This will help them understand the process of setting and achieving a goal. Then, once they grasp this concept, you can have them set more goals. Have students focus on which goals are most important (make sure they are measureable, achievable, and specific).

4. Help Improve Unrealistic Goals

Some students may dream big, maybe too big, and you know that this goal will be unachievable. Instead of telling the student that they cannot do it, help them refine their goal into something you know they will be able to achieve.

5. Develop a Step-by-Step Method to Achieving the Goal

Once students have set their goals, it's time to develop a step-by-step method to achieving this goal. Let's say one student's goal was to get 100 percent correct on their minute math test. The first question they should ask themselves is, "How am I going to achieve this goal?" Then, "What are the steps I need to take in order to get a 100 percent on the test?" Here is an example of the steps he/she needs to take.

Step 1 - Do all math homework.

Step 2 - Do math flashcards everyday.

Step 3- Practice minute math worksheets.

Step 4 - Play the game "Around the World" to practice math facts.

Step 5 - Get 100% on the minute math test.

6. Visually Create Your Goal

A visual reminder is a great way to help students physically see what their goal is. Depending upon what the student likes, visual reminders can be in many forms. For example, students can write down their steps on a ladder worksheet, where their goal is at the top and the steps to reach it is going up the ladder. Or, it can be in the form of a picture where it is literally a goal post with the goal written in the middle and the steps along the side.

7. Keep in Mind the Time Factor

Make sure students set a timeline to achieve their goal. Let's use the example above about the minute math test. If this was a short-term goal, the student can set his or her timeline for one week. If this was a long-term goal, then the timeline could be one month, or even a few months depending on the student's ability.

8. Have a Monthly Conference

Each month, have a conference with each student to see how their goals are developing. They may need some guidelines or motivation to help them achieve their goal by the time they set it. This tip is extremely important because children tend to forget about their goal, or get discouraged if they think they may not be able to achieve it. This is when you can help get them back on track.

9. Set Up a Reward

The reward may be achieving the goal in itself, but for some goals a little something extra will make achieving that goal even better. As adults, if we set a goal to lose five pounds, and we achieve that goal, we may treat ourselves to a special shopping trip, or a dessert to celebrate our accomplishment. If a student's goal was to turn in his or her homework on time every day for a month that may not be as rewarding as physically seeing that you lost five pounds. Set up a reward with the student that you both agree on: Something that will help them to continue to see the benefit of achieving their goals.

10. Celebrate Once a Goal is Achieved

Hooray! You have achieved your goal! Now it's time to celebrate. If all students set a goal and had the same end date and they all achieved their goal, celebrate with a class party! Then have students set new goals.
Happy New Year! What are some ways you teach goal setting in your classroom? Do you have any new year goals set for yourself? Please share with us in the comment section below! We would love to hear your thoughts. Janelle Cox is an education writer who draws on her 15 years of professional experience in the education system. Janelle holds a master's of science in education from the State University of New York College at Buffalo. She is also the Elementary Education Expert for , where she provides educational information and lesson plans for teachers around the globe.

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10 Tips to Help Students Set New Year Goals

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Now is the perfect time to teach students the importance of setting . This is an important life skill students need to learn. While young students may not be planning for college just yet, they can learn the importance of setting and achieving new year goals.

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Mills (2011) explains that, “The goal of teachers to be professional problem solvers who are committed to improving both their own practice and student outcomes provides a powerful reason to practice action research” (p. 21).

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Sagor, R. (1992). How to Conduct Collaborative Action Research. Alexandria, VA: Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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According to Mills (2011), “Action research significantly contributes to the professional stance that teachers adopt because it encourages them to examine the dynamics on their classrooms, ponder their actions and interactions with students, validate and challenge existing practice, and take risks in the process,” (p. 9).

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Mills, G. E. (2011). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher. Boston: Pearson.