Strategies for teaching Goal Setting and Planning
In order to meet a goal, the student needs to careful organise their approach, including seeing the "big picture" and the smaller steps involved.
Goal Setting
- Provide rubrics and samples of finished projects. These assist students to see what they are trying to achieve and make the requirements of the task very clear.
- Provide visual representations (i.e. photographs or actual examples of work). This assists students to clearly see what the teacher is looking for.
- Use calendars and timelines. Calendars are visual reminders of due dates and allow short-term and long-term goals to be set.
- Explicitly teach goal setting in the classroom. Inform the class of broad goals and more specific short-term goals. Explicitly model how to set goals on particular tasks
Planning
Teach time management through:
- Discussion of the daily schedule and inclusion of time guidelines.
- Provision of visual representations. Place visual cues, dividers, or colour-coded sections on clocks to provide tangible representations of the amounts of time remaining.
- Practice in monitoring time usage. Students can take turns in monitoring the time for certain activities, and providing the class with time warnings about when an activity will end.
- Practice in time estimation. Complete activities such as guessing when a minute is up.
- Provide tools for tracking time. Provide particular students with tools such as egg-times and stop-watches. Set goals for activity completion.
Teach strategies to promote accurate allotment of time to tasks through:
- Providing schedules for days, lessons and tasks. Discuss each task and break down more complex activities into small parts, providing estimates for each component (A simple task ‘checklist'). As students gain these skills request them to complete the schedule or checklist, including breaking the tasks up into smaller components and providing a time estimate.
- Teach monitoring skills for time management. Review how well the estimated schedule compares to the actual time taken. This can be done through a quick check, or through the provision of reflection worksheets.
Important things to remember:
- Embed strategies for goal setting and planning in the curriculum
- Allocate sufficient time for students to learn and practice the strategies
- Teach the what, why and how of using the strategies