Helping Children Set SMART Goals

When we set goals for ourselves, it’s important to reach for setting SMART goals. These SMART goals need to be defined as: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, rigorous, realistic, result-focused, as well as timely and trackable. To help your Catholic high school in Orlando student set SMART goals, the Diocese of Orlando has created these tips and tricks. When the method is mastered, tracking and reaching goals becomes much more streamlined for you and your child.The easiest method to understand the SMART method of setting goals is to think of a goal and determine what needs to be upgraded in order to turn it into a SMART goal. For students, the goal could be something like, “I will improve my grades.” While this goal is a stepping stone, it is not incredibly specific. Will the grades improve in all subjects? Will it be reached next week or next year? Since these questions are not answered in the above goal, it’s important to upgrade the goal to, “I will improve all my grades by the next grading period.” Adding in the other upgrades to your goal becomes a lot more easier when you have this first step down.This time, we check to see if the goal is measurable. How do you measure what your grade improvement is? We also check for attainability. Ask yourself, can I reach it? And also ask if it is relevant and timely. Once again ask yourself, will this help me overall and do I have enough time to reach my goal?To recap, adding in the original idea of, “I will improve my grades,” and upgrading it to a SMARTer goal should look a little like this: “I will improve all my grades by at least three points by the next grading period.” As you can see, this goal is specific because you want to improve your grades by three points. It is measurable because there is a starting point and an end point. This goal is also relevant and timely because the time frame of next grading period has been added. With practice, this method will become so ingrained that your first attempt at creating a SMART goal may reach all five categories without a rewrite!Learn more about upgrading your goals to SMART goals by reading the blogs on our website. Contact the Diocese of Orlando at 407-246-4903 to enroll your child in one of our Catholic high schools in Orlando, where our caring and dedicated teachers strive to help each student attain his or her full potential.