A new year signals a chance to set new goals. As adults, it seems fitting for us to set our own. After all, who knows the importance of a goal—as well as our strengths, potential barriers, and benefits of success—more than us?
Loved ones may be tempted to take charge, though. Consider the example of striving to get healthy and in shape. You commit to buying fresh ingredients to make healthier meals, and you make a plan to walk more after work. Compare that approach to having a spouse or roommate declare that you need to lose some weight or lower your cholesterol. That “helpful” person then proceeds to remove snacks from your home and sets up a workout-of-the-day routine for you. It doesn’t take a wild imagination to picture how one way is personally motivating while the other can be stifling and might involve hiding the receipt and other evidence of a drive-thru French-fry-and-milkshake binge.
Goal setting in a classroom shouldn’t be all that different from goal setting in life outside of school, and it certainly shouldn’t be dramatically different for kids than it is for adults. If we, as educators, set goals for our students without their input, they, too, might become irritated and show it through negative social or academic behaviors. When we involve them in the process, however, we’re helping them develop goal setting as a lifelong skill that can connect academics, self-identity, and social needs. We’re also building their understanding of why goal setting matters, the confidence that they can set goals for themselves, and the expertise they need to be successful.
We can help our students identify impactful goals. Read on to learn how.
Why is goal setting so important?
Goal setting is critical to building not just academic subject area growth, but also student leadership skills, cognitive thinking, social awareness, and self-identity. Students building goal setting skills are developing self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision-making skills by connecting their emotions, values, and actions to assess their strengths and limitations. They are also improving their ability to manage stress, delay gratification, and persevere through challenges. Students with strong goal setting skills are more likely to benefit academically and socially and to use those skills for gaining independence and transitioning to adulthood.
Goal setting, when done well, also supports intrinsic and adaptive motivation and provides students with opportunities to move away from being dependent learners and things like treasure box prizes, pizza parties, and other external incentives. Effective goal setting benefits students by connecting deliberate practice and effort to positive outcomes and the kind of self-appreciation that is more in line with adult realities.
Goal setting can happen at any time
As educators, we are aware of the academic standards students are expected to master by the end of a grade. We are also familiar with typical student growth and external supports, such as curriculum materials, pacing guides, and instructional strategies we can implement as part of tiered instruction. Meanwhile, students may only know that they just need to pass the next test, project, or assignment.
There can be a big disconnect between a goal and pathways for student success and the actual student working on that goal. If a student doesn’t have a concrete, meaningful goal or path to follow, we are the ones doing all the work to get them there. Moving away from a goal setting process where you, the teacher, work independently to set the goal and strategies for a student and toward a more collaborative approach takes time and intentionality. The good news is goal setting isn’t just meant for the start of a school year. It can begin at any time, including after each testing event with MAP® Growth™.
A journey with student goal setting
When I think back to my experience with goal setting in the classroom, one specific journey comes to mind. It all started in a conference room with three passionate middle school administrators. I was one of them. Our hope was to have all students set a goal for their winter MAP Growth test. We were curious about how conferences could help teachers and students work together to set those goals, so we selected one student and worked closely with him to model what these conversations could look like.
I began by sharing with the student the purpose of our meeting and his Student Profile report, which detailed his achievement and growth over the few years he had taken MAP Growth. We also reviewed the strengths and needs included in the report. He said he hadn’t ever seen those test results and didn’t know what the scores meant.
That student was surprised to see how he had scored compared to others—and to himself over the years. There were clear opportunities for him to focus on developing his math skills, so I shared the typical RIT score growth in math for his grade, and from there he decided how much better he was going to do on the next assessment. He set a goal to improve his RIT to twice as much growth as was typical for a seventh grader. He wrote his name and his RIT goal on the board in the conference room. I encouraged him to do that because writing a goal makes it more concrete, which leads to a greater likelihood of success.
Setting a goal with a student is just the beginning. We also spent some time talking about strategies he could begin implementing right away that would likely help him show some improvement in as little as a week. We talked about academic strategies he could control, such as going to class, putting more effort into assessments, prioritize paying attention in class, and doing all assigned homework. I pushed and asked whether he could also do extra online assignments and ask for help in class when he was stuck, but he declined and explained why those strategies didn’t fit into what he thought he could do and see for himself. He didn’t want to do extra work at home, he explained, and he didn’t want his peers in class to see if he was struggling with a concept.
The student’s honesty and connection to social needs led to a conversation about behavior and social strategies, including who he was going to tell about the goal and how he might celebrate when he reached it. He also committed to coming to school regularly and on time to participate in the school’s breakfast program. I was intentional about the strategies we talked about because I wanted to make clear to him that there are various ways to build academic growth. The student wrote all the agreements down and decided his incentive for meeting his RIT score goal was to have lunch with his principal.
The next time I saw that student after our collaboration, he let me know that not only did he meet his goal, but he exceeded it and had reached the threshold to take a high school credit Algebra I class as an eighth grader. He now saw himself as “math smart,” which was quite a shift from the kid sent to the office for behavior on a regular basis. It was clear that he was now a more empowered learner, one who was driving his own efforts toward success. After that single conversation and meeting his ambitious goal, he carried that stronger math identity into his eighth-grade year. Algebra I became one of the few classes he consistently attended and engaged in. Imagine if we could continue building those skills in all his classes, beyond school, or even with all his classmates.
Resources for helping you and your students collaborate on goal setting
NWEA has a variety of resources to help teachers connect academic goals with their students, using MAP Growth scores as a starting point:
- A video interview with Chase Nordengren, former NWEA researcher and author of Step Into Student Goal Setting: A Path to Growth, Motivation, and Agency
- More than a dozen Learn. Grow. articles in our archive of posts on goal setting, including “Goal setting in winter: Prioritize conversations with students”
- A student goal setting template with four different formats to help you and your students identify current areas of strengths and need, a goal, strategies to meet that goal and address obstacles, and a plan of action
- A goal setting infographic to help you visualize meaningful and realistic growth goals as part of assessment
- Our professional learning workshops on student goal setting, which focus on helping educators use MAP Growth reports and key elements of goal-setting conversations to help you engage students in goal setting and achievement
- Our MAP Growth Goal Explorer user guide and FAQ, which provides insight on how to use the MAP Growth Goal Explorer to guide developing meaningful and realistic goals, understanding and determining average and aspirational growth targets, and comparisons to state proficiency benchmarks and national averages
