Setting and achieving goals is a vital part of being human. If we’re not working toward something, we can struggle with feelings of uncertainty and a lack of direction (Klinger & Cox, 2011).
If we’re not taught goal setting as students, it can be tough to get started later in life. But luckily, goal setting is a practice that operates on a set of specific skills, and these skills are relatively easy to teach.
Whether you’re a parent, educator, or another caring adult, you can help children learn how to decide on their goals, define them, and track their progress.
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Setting goals is a vital practice that can benefit anyone with a dream or a vision for their future. Young people who are just starting out in life are at a particularly opportune time to start building their goal-setting skills.
These skills serve them throughout their lives, and building them early gives youth an introduction to self-regulation: controlling their actions in the short term to manifest the future they want.
Parents can encourage goal setting in their children — and absolutely should do so — but the importance of this skill justifies its inclusion in our schools’ curriculum. A curriculum that includes setting goals teaches kids the mechanics and techniques of goal setting, gives them early wins, and helps them develop belief in themselves.
Anyone who has worked with children will recognize the importance of self-belief and self-confidence for early life development.
Understanding Relevant Psychological Theories for Student Goals
Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of goal setting, both for the children who practice it and for the schools and systems that encourage it (O’Neill, 2000).
There are two stacking benefits when teachers practice good goal setting:
Successful goal setting is modeled for students.
With effective goal setting in place, the school will become even better at facilitating learning.
Motivation theory tells us that humans are naturally drawn to achieving goals, but whether a person achieves their goal depends on several factors, like the goal, the situation, and the type of motivation (Urhahne & Wijnia, 2023).
The presence of intrinsic motivation, an internal incentive to do an activity, instead of extrinsic motivation, an external incentive to do an activity, makes a person more likely to achieve their goal (Kuvaas, 2018).
The goal and the situation are important, but perhaps the most important factor is the self. When a person believes in themself and their own ability to effect change in their life (known as self-efficacy; Bandura, 1977), they are far more likely to follow through in goal striving (Niazi et al., 2013).
Cultivating a growth mindset, the belief that characteristics and abilities can be developed, can also be a key factor in the success kids achieve throughout their lifespan (Combette et al., 2024; Yeager & Dweck, 2021).
To foster a growth mindset and enhance a child’s self-efficacy in goal attainment, parents and educators can offer the child opportunities to practice setting, striving toward, and achieving goals. According to self-efficacy theory, gaining experiences of success like this is the best way to increase belief in one’s own abilities to do something (Bandura, 1977).
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3 Goal-Setting Activities for Younger Kids (Ages 5–10)
Younger kids are at a great age to start learning how to set goals. However, the activities need to be simple and straightforward to keep young kids on task.
1. How to set and achieve goals
This video from Bluejack Kids is an excellent introduction to the process. It’s broken down into easy steps, explaining goal setting in basic terms with some helpful visual cues. It will provide a great, kid-friendly introduction to goal setting.
How to set and achieve goals
Once you’ve introduced your kids or students to goal setting, try these two very basic worksheets with your younger kids.
2. Student goal-setting worksheet
This is one of the most straightforward worksheets out there, making it a great choice for young children.
The Student Goal Setting Worksheet includes sections for the student’s name and the current date, then poses these five prompts:
I am good at …
I am bad at …
What will I improve?
How will I make these improvements?
If my plan doesn’t work, what will I do?
Working through this activity will help them start thinking about what goal setting is as well as what direction they’d like to go with their goals.
You will likely need to walk your students through these prompts, so be prepared to provide assistance as needed.
3. My goals
This exercise is a little more intensive, so you might want to try the previous activities before this one, but it’s a helpful way for students to practice identifying and planning for their goals.
It only requires them to set two goals, and they should be given ample room to write them down, although they may need your help with this.
After they have identified two goals, they must answer the following prompts for each of them:
This goal is important because …
Steps I’ll take to reach this goal are …
It’s quick and easy, typically taking less than 10 minutes.
3 Goal-Setting Activities for Middle & High-School Students (Ages 11–18)
For middle school and high school kids, there is a broader range of options that are developmentally appropriate.
If you’re a teacher of middle schoolers or high schoolers, these activities and worksheets will provide you with plenty of options for adding goal setting into the curriculum.
1. Goal execution plan
The Goal Execution Plan template is an excellent resource for older students due to the considerations it includes and the level of detail.
It includes space for up to three goals, with five steps per goal, and provides the following columns for each step:
Action steps
Date start
Responsible (who is responsible for it)
Starting metrics (metrics measure goal progress; this is the starting point for these measures)
Budget (if any)
Notes
Final metrics (endpoint for the measures of goal progress)
Date end
You may not need all of the columns, but it’s helpful to have prompts to encourage deep reflection about each goal.
2. Simple goal-setting worksheet
This is another simple worksheet that can be used with younger or older students to help them figure out the basics of setting and working toward their goals.
The worksheet provides space for students to answer the following prompts:
My goal is …
Goal completion date
Steps to reach my goal (space for four)
Two things that will help me reach my goal (space for two)
I will know I have reached my goal because …
If using this worksheet with younger students, you might need to guide them or provide examples, but older students should have no trouble completing it.
3. Action for goals worksheet
This worksheet is a great reminder for students that setting goals on its own won’t get you anywhere. You need to set mini goals and identify action steps on the way to your larger goal.
The worksheet provides an example of a larger goal and the action steps that will lead to it.
Overall goal: I will learn to play a musical instrument proficiently in five years.
I will determine which instrument I would like to play.
I will find a tutor/teacher and begin taking lessons weekly.
I will practice daily for 60 minutes.
Using this as a template, students are given the space to write down three goals and come up with three action steps per goal.
Completing this worksheet will help students get in the right frame of mind for goal setting and goal striving and keep them cognizant of the effort required to actually meet their goals after setting them.
Implementing good goal-setting learning in the classroom doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With a little thoughtfulness and planning, you can help your students get started on building these vital skills. The key thing to remember is to set yourself up for getting good student engagement.
According to Education World (n.d.), there are six key tips to being successful in setting and achieving goals:
Create goals that are clear and measurable.
Draft a specific plan of action for each goal.
Review your goals daily and use visualization techniques to see yourself achieving them.
Reflect regularly on your progress toward achieving your goals.
If needed, revise your plan of action.
Celebrate your achievements!
If this list looks familiar, it’s likely because you’ve heard about SMART goals. Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals is a tried and true method of achieving valued outcomes, and it can easily be taught to children and youth.
The research on this topic provides some extra tips and tricks for maximizing the effectiveness of goal-setting curricula.
Provide students with limits (both upper and lower) when setting goals to teach students how to be realistic (these limits can be subject to change).
Practice goal setting with games to make it fun and keep the pressure low.
Give students focused assistance with assessing goal difficulty through one-on-one goal-setting conferences (Schunk, 1990).
Encourage students to write down their goals rather than simply creating them and leaving them floating around in their minds (Matthews, 2015).
Make extensive use of models in the classroom to show students how it works.
Teach and model evidence-backed goal-setting strategies (like SMART goals) to boost chances of success, and give students feedback on their progress.
Instill broader learning strategies as well as focused goal-setting skills that will build students’ overall abilities (Schunk, 2003).
3 Tips for Parents to Support Goal Achievement at Home
As parents, you have an important role to play in encouraging your kids to strive toward their goals both in and out of the classroom. Sometimes kids will find it easy to set and achieve goals in one area but difficult in another.
With the tips and activities below, you can facilitate setting and achieving goals, both in school and at home.
1. Make a family bucket list
Making a bucket list is a wonderful way to set goals, and this activity involves the whole family in the goal-setting practice. It allows you to both model goal setting and encourage your children to practice it themselves, all at once.
Here’s how to do it:
Get your family together and collect a piece of paper and some markers.
As a family, brainstorm a list of accomplishments, experiences, or achievement goals that you want to work toward as a family over the next year.
At the end of the year, look back over your list and see what you’ve accomplished. Celebrate the goals you accomplished as a family.
Encourage your children to use online tools like Trello or Evernote to help create this bucket list or to create one for themselves.
2. Draw a wheel of life
The wheel of life is a fun way to introduce goal setting in different areas of life. It will show your children that you don’t need to keep your goals limited to school or work; you can set goals in all life domains.
Follow these steps to create and use a wheel of fortune:
Draw a circle and divide it into even segments (like you’re cutting a pizza into slices).
On each segment, write one of the important life domains; for example, you might write “Family,” “Friends,” “School/Work,” “Hobbies,” “Health,” and “Fun.”
For each domain, have your child write out the goals they would like to accomplish. Make sure they keep the goals to a specific timeline (e.g., a month, three months, or a year).
Make sure to help them keep track of their progress throughout the timeline they chose.
3. Play Three Stars and a Wish
This is a fun and easy game that you can play with your students or your children to help them start thinking about their goals.
It’s a simple activity with simple rules:
Ask your children to come up with three “stars,” or things that they do well. The sky is the limit for this activity. The thing they’re good at can be anything from a subject in school to a quality that makes them a good friend.
Once students have their three stars identified, have them create a “wish” to complement their stars. Their wish will be something that they would like to get better or more consistent at doing, and they can pick anything that is meaningful to them. Again, they are only limited by their imagination.
This activity will help them come up with important goals and also help them develop the self-belief they need to succeed.
17 Tools To Increase Motivation and Goal Achievement
These 17 Motivation & Goal Achievement Exercises [PDF] contain all you need to help others set meaningful goals, increase self-drive, and experience greater accomplishment and life satisfaction.
For more helpful tools on teaching goal setting to kids, check out these worksheets from PositivePsychology.com’s master resource list:
The Abstraction Worksheet can help older kids think about what behavior they’d like to set a goal to change and guide them in visualizing this desired future state.
This worksheet will walk students through setting SMART goals.
The G Stands for Goal worksheet is a great resource for older kids and students who want to think through setting a grand goal and breaking it into smaller subgoals.
Goal setting is a vital practice to start early with children, and fortunately there are so many good resources to foster it effectively. Whether you’re working with very young children who need fun and engaging games to get them started or older children who are ready for more intensive goal-setting practice, there are tools available that can guide the process.
The dividends of building goal-setting skills in early life are well worth the upfront effort. By equipping young children with these tools, educators and parents alike can foster a foundation for lifelong self-directed growth.
We hope you found this piece to be a useful starting point for teaching goal setting to youth.
Teaching goal setting to a child is straightforward; it just requires some planning and a little bit of patience. First, you need to explain goal setting and why we do it. Once the child has a basic understanding, show them an example of effective goal setting. Finally, walk them through setting a goal that they want to accomplish. When they see how it works and try it for themselves, they’ll be ready to start setting their own goals independently.
What is an example of a SMART goal for a student?
SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. A good SMART goal for a student might look like this:
“I want to raise all of my grades to a B or above within the next semester. I will see a tutor after school two days a week and spend four extra hours studying per week to accomplish this goal.”
At what age should you start teaching kids about goals?
Kids can start learning about goals as early as three or four. The goals will need to be age appropriate and short term for them to start building understanding. Once they understand goals, you can start teaching SMART goals and more advanced goal-setting and goal-striving techniques between ages five and 10.
Combette, L. T., Rotgé, J.-Y., Darnon, C., & Schmidt, L. (2024). Delivering mindset interventions to teachers as an efficient way to leverage the impact of mindset interventions. Social Psychology of Education: An International Journal, 27(4), 2093–2109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-023-09870-3
Klinger, E., & Cox, W. M. (2004). Motivation and the theory of current concerns. In W. M. Cox & E. Klinger (Eds.), Handbook of motivational counseling: Concepts, approaches, and assessment (pp. 3–27). John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Kuvaas, B. (2018). Chapter 12: The relative efficiency of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. In A. Sasson (Ed.), At the forefront, looking ahead (pp. 198–213). Universitetsforlaget.
Matthews, G. (2015). Goal research summary. Paper presented at the 9th Annual International Conference of the Psychology Research Unit of Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), Athens, Greece.
Niazi, S., Adil, A., & Malik, N. I. (2013). Self-efficacy as predictor of motivational goals in university students. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 39(2), 274–280.
Schunk, D. H. (1990). Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 25(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2501_6
Schunk, D. H. (2003). Self-efficacy for reading and writing: Influence of modeling, goal setting, and self-evaluation. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 19(2), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573560308219
Urhahne, D., & Wijnia, L. (2023). Theories of motivation in education: An integrative framework. Educational Psychology Review, 35(2), Article 45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09767-9
Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2021). What can be learned from growth mindset controversies? American Psychologist, 75(9), 1269–1284. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000794
About the author
Courtney Ackerman, MA, is a mental health policy researcher for the State of California and a freelance author and consultant. Her areas of expertise include mental and behavioral health policy, violence prevention, and survey research.
Setting and achieving goals is a vital part of being human. If we’re not working toward something, we can struggle with feelings of uncertainty and a lack of direction (Klinger & Cox, 2011).
Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of goal setting, both for the children who practice it and for the schools and systems that encourage it (O’Neill, 2000).
For middle school and high school kids, there is a broader range of options that are developmentally appropriate.
As parents, you have an important role to play in encouraging your kids to strive toward their goals both in and out of the classroom. Sometimes kids will find it easy to set and achieve goals in one area but difficult in another.
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