Are you required to create SMART Goals for yourself as a teacher? We've had this acronym around for a while and I decided to try it out with my class this week as our goal-setting was feeling too broad and unfocused. If you haven't heard, SMART Goals stand for: I've seen "R" stand for "Relevant", "Realistic", "Recorded,", "Results-Oriented", "Rewarding", and more!! Choose what fits your class best :) Several of these words weren't easy for the kids to understand, so we spent some of the morning talking through each point and giving some examples and non-examples of each. We came up with this mini-anchor chart that's now hanging in the back of our class: I gave them the direction of "weekly"-- I want them to start small and we can work out from there. Plus, our Friday mornings have this perfect chunk of time for reflection, so I'm hoping this short time period will help kids reach some manageable goals and be able to feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of each week. Every student then received a sticky note. I had them put their name on the back and I gave them two sentence starters for the front: In one week, I will.... I know I've made my goal when... This was the first week we've done this work, so I wasn't expecting perfection, but I was pleasantly surprised with how many kids could now generate some legitimate goals for their week ahead. Several revolved around homework, some dealt with classroom behavior, and others with academics. As they finished, I had them place their notes on a large piece of chart paper I had laminated and titled, "Our Class Goals": We are a "Leader in Me" School, so these goals worked perfectly with Habit #2: Begin with the end in mind. This chart is now hanging in the back of the classroom with their stickies in their Class Number spots and will be clearly visible to them throughout the week. It will become a focus piece during our Morning Meeting and I am excited to reflect on these each week to see how well we did. I will share our reflections (as well as "Rewarding" ideas) in a later post, but in the meantime, I hope this gave you some ideas for how you can set up goals in your own classroom this year! Happy goal-setting! Find more Goal-Setting Posts here:
