Topic Progress:

Moving Forward: Setting Goals

Classrooms full of actively engaged students are created when teachers intentionally work to develop self-regulated learners who set their own goals, select effective strategies to reach those goals, and monitor and adjust what they do depending on the demands of the task and their own strengths and needs.

  Watch a video about student goal setting.

How often do you have students set goals?

How often should students set goals?

“Clear learning targets direct both teachers and students toward specific goals. […] Students can meet goals only if they are actually working toward them, and they can’t work toward them until they understand what they are.”

Moss & Brookhart, 2009

Ideas to Use

  • If students write down learning targets, they could also write 1-5 stars to identify how confident they are about the skill or knowledge and write a short goal for how they would like to improve by tomorrow.
  • After discussing the learning target and clarifying language/expectations, ask students to write goals on post-it-notes for how they would like to improve by the end of the lesson.
  • Ask students to fill out a KWL (what I know, what I would like to know, and after learning, what I learned) chart. Use this for students to set goals about how they plan to learn what they write in the “W” section.
  • After discussing and interacting with the rubric, ask students to identify one criteria they would like to see growth on for this assignment and set a goal for how stay focused on it.

Closing

Make a list of practices you plan to implement for each strategy based on your learning from today.

StrategyMy Practice/Activity
1a. Provide students with a clear and understandable vision of the learning target. 
1b. Use Rubrics to help define learning targets 
2. Use examples and models of strong and weak work.