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The new year is a perfect time to teach lessons on goal setting for students. However, this is a super relevant and very applicable life skill year round. No need to wait until January to teach goal setting! Often times, us teachers are setting goals FOR kids. While this can be really helpful (and sometimes more accurate than how kids might view it), it’s also so crucial to teach kids goal setting independently. Looking for some tangible ways to do this? I have 4 ideas on how to make goal setting a powerful part of your curriculum!
Interactive Notebooks
New Years activities
Goal setting activities tie in perfectly with January lessons. Making New Years resolutions is really fun to do with kids, and they can be focused on a variety of goal areas. I love having students create a school goal and a personal goal when we return to school after winter break. The New Years activities in this pack include goal setting (also called creating an intention) and finding an accountability partner to support them. There’s also a bunch of varied and differentiated New Years activities included!
Goal setting mini-lesson
Looking for MORE on goal setting? This mini-lesson SEL pack tackles goal setting in such a fun way. There’s a mini-book explaining the topic of goal setting, games that ask students to sequence and determine the best goal for the scenario, and more. This pack is winter themed, so if you aren’t ready for goal setting right after winter break, you can easily use this through February and have it still be super relevant.
Goal setting picture books
You know I love, love, love the combination of social emotional learning and picture books! When teaching any concept, I love reinforcing the lessons and themes with picture books. It helps students make more varied, concrete connections and expands their knowledge of the topic as they see different scenarios unfold. The conversations that often stem from read alouds are truly unmatched. I have two picture books that I truly adore that are about goal setting.
Squirrel’s New Years Resolution by Pat Miller is such a terrific book for kicking off a unit on goal setting in January. Because of the seasonal nature of the book, it really is only relevant to read in early January. Squirrel is learning about resolutions for the new year and is contemplating what hers should be. She helps a lot of the other animals in the forest determine their resolutions, but spends much of the book trying to decide what hers should be. This is a really nice launching point, as kids will naturally begin thinking about their own resolutions (goals, intentions) for the year.
I Can Do It! By Jennifer Gaither is a perfect read aloud if you’re focusing on goals at ANY point in the school year. This book tackles how setting a goal requires perseverance, confidence, effort, and a growth mindset. I love how this book covers mistakes, as such a big part of resolutions and goals is the idea that they often fizzle out or we give up on them. This is a great proactive conversation to have with students as they begin setting goals and see how long it could take to achieve their end goal.
What do you think? Are goals a topic in your January lesson plans? Let us know in the comments!
