Goal Setting for 2022

Fly high with your first lesson of 2022

This time of year, always brings out the planner in us, right? Time to set some goals, make some resolutions, make plans, and generally set ourselves up for a great year ahead! And I’m guessing that you plan on doing the same in your ELT classes. Fantastic! It’s topical and is a great low-preparation lesson. 

A couple of considerations before you start. Asking children to set a goal for a year is probably unachievable because it’s such a vast amount of time – for all of us really. With primary classes, it’s always important to set children up for success so I would suggest a month is probably the longest amount of time for this activity. After all, resetting and recreating goals on a regular basis is what most of us do anyway! We can use these goal setting activities to help develop children’s ability to break bigger tasks into smaller, manageable chunks. This helps to make the goals more achievable. Also, we need to have a way of measuring our progress towards our goal(s) and this is a great opportunity to encourage creativity with children. Finally, rather than children being overwhelmed with lots of resolutions, promises and goals, I would encourage choosing just one or two. This will make it more achievable and more satisfying when children manage to hit their goals!

Here is a goal-themed lesson plan for upper primary /lower teen classes. 

1. On the board write ‘January 1st 2022’. Ask children to tell you what day of the week (Saturday) it was and if they did anything special. 

2. Say Many people make promises to themselves for the coming year. You can teach New Year’s Resolutions here. Elicit some examples e.g., not eat chocolate, go to the gym, do some reading every night.

3. Ask children to share something things they would like to achieve in January/February. 

4. On the board write some categories for example e.g., sport, (helping) at home, (looking after) pets, homework, screen time. 

5. Pre-teach/ elicit going to structure. (This is a clear plan rather than a hopeful prediction!)

6. Ask children write one or two goals for each category. E.g., Screen time - In January I’m going to play my favourite game for 30 minutes. 

7. Now ask children to choose one of their resolutions. This could be the most important goal, or the easiest? Or the most fun? Goals can be daily or weekly habits. Now ask them how they are going to achieve it. E.g., set a timer for screen time? Plan their screen time? Children either write or draw pictures to illustrate their ideas. 

8. Children do this with their other goals. 

9. Elicit some different ways to record their progress for example in a diary, a chart, a tracker, or just a simple row of 7 circles which they colour when they have completed their task. It’s important that there is a satisfying way of ‘ticking’ the activity upon completion. 

10 Check with children throughout the first week to see how they are progressing. Are they achieving their goals? Do they need to adjust them? change them?