Goal setting
Goal setting is a great way for students to focus and remain motivated. By setting clear and achievable goals, students can remember what they want to achieve and why they are driven to do so. It can also provide a sense of purpose in life which, in turn, will increase student wellbeing, grit and resilience. During this lesson, students practise setting goals while thinking about what they want to achieve in the future.
Year level
Transition
Duration
20 minutes
Type
In class activity
SEL Competencies
Self-awareness
Self-management
Learning intention
Students will learn about goals, and about how setting them can help in achieving them.
Key outcomes
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
set goals for the future
discuss strategies for setting effective goals.
Materials needed
Whiteboard and markers
Student access to the ReachOut.com article ‘Set goals like a boss’
Worksheet for students to set goals
Mapped to
Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education
Analyse the impact of changes and transitions, and devise strategies to support themselves and others through these changes (AC9HP8P02)
Australian Curriculum: General Capabilities
Personal and Social Capability:
Self-awareness
Self-management
NSW PDHPE Syllabus
Examines and evaluates strategies to manage current and future challenges (PD4-1)
Victorian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education
Evaluate strategies to manage personal, physical and social changes that occur as they grow older (VCHPEP124)
Activity 1
Meditation: Future gazing
10 minutes
Ask students to close their eyes, take a deep breath and clear their thoughts.
Tell them to listen to your guided meditation.
When the students are still and quiet, say: ‘Imagine yourself in six years’ time. Something important is about to happen and you are with the people who are most important to you:
What would you like to happen? Are you graduating, or do you have a job?
Who would you like to be with? Are your family there supporting you? Which friends have stuck by you?
How would you like to think of yourself? Do you like who you are?
How would you like other people to think of you?’
Conclude the mediation by asking students: ‘How are you going to get there, to the place you imagined and dreamed?’
Explain to students: ‘To achieve a goal, you need to have one. To get to the end of secondary school and be happy with where you are, you need to set and achieve little goals along the way. Just like going up a set of steps, we need to take them one at a time.’
Activity 2
Individual task: Setting goals
10 minutes
Ask students to draw a ladder.
At the top of the ladder, students write a ‘big-picture’ goal for the end of secondary school.
For each rung, students write a step they need to achieve on their way to achieving their main goal.
Ask students to be detailed and even to use drawings if that is helpful.
After the students have completed their ladder, they can show it to others. Encourage students to help each other with filling in details by asking each other questions.
