New Year, New Me – Setting SMART Goals
New year, New me!
Every year between January first through the seventh, I see plenty of people either on social media or in person set ridiculous resolutions! Whether they are weight loss resolutions – the most popular – or career resolutions – not as popular but sometimes just as ridiculous. And usually by mid to end of February, the resolutions are not only not met, but abandoned.
It got me thinking, do students set resolutions for the school year? Do students think about how they finished the previous semester and how they want to finish off this semester? Do students think about how to best measure their goals, or when they can achieve those goals?
Here is the best way to set New Year resolutions and perhaps actually achieve them! First, you’ll need to set SMART goals. Second, you’ll need to work on those SMART goals consistently.
But what are SMART goals?! They aren’t just smart, they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Let’s work with an imaginary student – Nancy – who is in 5th grade and wants to improve her ability to do math in her head. How would Nancy set a SMART goal for herself?
First, let’s think about specific goals. Nancy needs to be specific with what she wants to improve on. For example, instead of saying I will get better at math facts, Nancy should say I will know all of her multiplication facts from 1-12 in three months. Now that this is specific, we need to look at how Nancy will measure this goal.
To measure this goal, Nancy is lucky because her teacher at school gives the students a math facts quiz with 10 questions every Friday. So Nancy can measure how well she’s doing with keeping up with her goal by taking the quiz. But let’s say that Nancy’s teacher doesn’t do the quiz in class. Nancy can still measure how well she’s attaining her goal by someone quizzing her on a weekly basis.
Third, let’s look at attainability. Is this a realistic goal for Nancy? Did Nancy know any multiplication facts before she set this goal? Is three months enough time? Maybe Nancy needs more time, or less time? Let’s say for our hypothetical Nancy, 3 months is very realistic because she’s already memorized some of the multiplication facts.
Once those hard questions are answered, usually SMART goal setting people think about the relevance of the goal that they’ve set. Is this something that they really should be working on? Is this what will help them become happy people? Better people? Lucky for hypothetical Nancy, she doesn’t have to answer these harder questions because she knows that her math facts are important. And lucky for students who want to get better grades and understand the concept, yes their goals are really relevant!
Finally, Nancy will have to determine when she will work on meeting her goal of improving her math facts. Will she work on it in the before school, after school, after soccer, before swim lessons, on the weekends, etc? Putting that time on a calendar – preferably daily at the same time – would be ideal. Imagine if hypothetical Nancy knew that every morning while she’s brushing her teeth she’s reciting her multiplication facts through 12. She doesn’t even have to think about it anymore, she wakes up and starts to brush her teeth and recite her math! She’s likely to be a star at multiplication facts pretty quickly!
While this seems like a lot for hypothetical Nancy to do on her own, she is only a hypothetical 5th grade student, it shouldn’t seem as difficult for a student in middle or high school.