Learning Goals and Student Feedback Teaching Resources

Help your students reach their learning goals with these helpful goals and feedback teaching resources. Resources available include display posters, brag tags, visible learning goal PowerPoints, growth mindset resources reflective thinking sentence starters and more! Also available are goals and I can statements for Literacy and Numeracy.

As teachers, we know the importance of setting goals for our students, but how do you make sure those goals work for each individual student? Read on for tips from our teacher team!

What Are Learning Goals?

Let's start at the beginning. The term 'learning goals' tends to refer to the specific knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire by the end of a particular academic year or the end of a year level.

These goals are typically based on curriculum standards, and they're designed to ensure that students are meeting year-level expectations in core subject areas such as reading, writing, maths or science.

For example, you might have a learning goal for English that by the end of the school year, students should be able to read and comprehend year-level texts with accuracy, fluency and understanding.

Or maybe a learning goal for science outlines that students be able to identify and describe the properties of matter and understand the basics of the scientific method.

Who Are Learning Goals For?

These goals that we're talking about focus on the student, but they aren't just for the student themselves.

In fact, learning goals provide a roadmap for you as a teacher to plan and deliver instruction that helps your students achieve these objectives. They also provide a framework for assessing your students' progress and identifying areas where additional support or instruction may be needed.

Student Goal Setting in the Classroom

Helping our students to set and achieve their own goals is also an important part of teaching. Having attainable student goals is a great way for the kids in our care to take control of their learning journey and continuously improve in their learning. Not only this, but setting goals in other areas of their lives helps our students to improve personally and socially as well!

Setting SMART Goals

Before students can set goals, they need a plan. For a goal to be appropriate, it needs to be SMART, and yes, we capitalised those letters for a reason!

When it comes to goals, SMART is an acronym that stands for:

• S - Specific. What, exactly, do they want to achieve?
• M - Measurable. How will they know that they have achieved their goal?
• A - Achievable. Your students want to set goals that are challenging, but attainable. Is the outcome of the goal feasible?
• R - Relevant. Does the student goal reflect something that the student should be working towards?
• T - Timely. What is the timeframe for achieving the student's goal?