Goal setting for elementary schools means identifying educational milestones and plotting routes to their achievement. It also means identifying desired areas of personal development of individual students and the professional growth and effectiveness of faculty. Effective goal setting in the elementary setting affects more than the classroom for all participants, reaching into personal and professional lives to create self-fulfillment and a desire to continue to improve.
Educational goal setting in elementary school is somewhat built in to the curriculum through minimum mandatory skills testing, such as for reading and math. These tests act as academic goals because they clearly state what must be learned throughout the year in each subject. Using the required passing scores of these tests as the ultimate goal, the road map for achievement is built with the questions comprising each subject's test. Teach students to master the information required to answer each question correctly, and then the ultimate goal--mastery of sufficient information to earn a passing score on the tests--is achieved.
Student Personal Development
LegacyProject.org suggests that the school year begin and end with a goal-setting strategy involving dreams. Teach elementary students to set goals by identifying their dreams and helping them map a route to their achievement. The Legacy Project uses goal-setting exercises such as "Learn to Dream" to spark imagination and the "Dream Theme" where the chosen desire becomes an underlying life theme. The "Goal Letter" plays an integral part in the process of committing to a goal's achievement--a goal and its desired outcome or life application is written down, making the process entirely intentional.
Faculty Personal and Professional Development
Fulfilled people make effective teachers, and goal setting in the personal and professional areas of an elementary school teacher's life helps the individual achieve fulfillment. Jack Canfield, author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series, suggests the following goal-setting steps for achieving fulfillment both personally, and as a result, professionally: assume complete responsibility for one's own life and success; identify desires, break them down into parts and assign specific “action steps” to move one toward the desire's achievement, visualize the desire's achievement, and remain unwaveringly persistent in the pursuit of the desire. Personal desires are different for everyone, but professional desires, or goals, related to education are the achievement of an ability to communicate with specific age ranges, the ability to inspire curiosity and the desire to learn, and the development of an agile mind to continually create new and exciting experiences in the elementary classroom.
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