How to Use Goal-Setting to Improve Writing Skills

Larry Ferlazzo, a former award-winning high school English and social studies teacher and opinion contributor to Education Week, interviews educator Valerie Bolling, who has written a book about setting writing goals to make the writing process more accessible for students and more manageable for teachers. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

 What made you write a book on goal setting and on goal setting with student writing?

Writing can be difficult for some students, and teaching students how to write can be challenging. Putting goal-setting practices in place benefited students in my own classroom, and in classrooms where I served as an instructional coach. I want to share ideas and strategies to help students be more capable, confident writers and provide a structure teachers can use to facilitate this growth.

With goals students will see their achievement and feel proud of what they’ve accomplished. They will recognize that setting goals and focusing on them works!

I’ve had former students who still remember their writers’ notebooks in which they worked on their writing goals and grammar lessons they learned. They remember winning contests and having their work published in poetry anthologies and other student publications due to the work they did in our classroom.

In setting goals inside and outside of the classroom, in writing and beyond writing, we need a good teacher, coach, and/or community to guide us along the path, hold us accountable, and cheer us on. I want to see teachers do all of this for their students and to lead them to become writers who master what they write, are independent thinkers, and, ultimately, successful writers.

What advice would you offer to teachers about how and why to make the time to add goal-setting into what they’re doing.

Making the effort to set goals for your students will require additional time, initially. But the more you focus on goal setting in your classroom and make it a natural part of “business as usual,” the easier it becomes to incorporate it into your normal routine. Your students will accept it as part of the regular routine, too.

These are the three tips I would offer to help with time management:

1. Integrate goal setting into lesson plans. At the beginning of a writing lesson, you could ask students to set an intention for their work by choosing one of their goals to focus on. At the end of a lesson, ask students how they worked on a particular goal in their writing that day. You might do a quick check-in on progress by asking students to jot down one of their goals and an example that shows how they worked on it or where they still need help.
2. Use your calendar to plan. You may randomly pick days on your calendar where you write: “Check in on students’ writing goals.” This should be a reminder to set aside time for goal-setting.
3. Share goal-setting with your students. Allow students to choose when they’ll work on particular goals and have them share that information with you. You’ll have more flexibility because you won’t have to attend to all of your students’ goal-setting needs at once. Your calendar is also helpful here because you want to give students a window of time when they’ll need to check in with you and they’ll need reminders.

What two or three pieces of advice would you offer to teachers about how students can follow up on their goals once they made them.

If goal setting is part of your lesson plans, it will happen.

Here are some specific tips on how to be consistent with goal setting:

1. Use a calendar to record check-in dates. Put check-in dates on your calendar, and in your lesson plans that correlate to certain assignments, assessments, and/or time periods. Write on your calendar when these check-in dates are coming up, so that you can prepare yourself and your students for them.
2. Provide time for students to work on goals in their regular assignments. Some goal-setting work needs to be planned for a class period or two and facilitated by you. But students can work and reflect on their goals in current assignments/assessments without any extra time for you to plan.
3. Collaborate with colleagues. Working with colleagues, you can plan together and keep each other accountable. Share information about your students and what you are doing to help them achieve their goals.

How do your goal-setting suggestions enhance student agency?

The goal setting I believe in and describe enhances student agency because students are taking the lead with teacher guidance. They choose their own goals and how they want to work on them. They monitor their goals and reflect on their progress. Peers and teachers give feedback, and when they have these meetings, they choose what they want to discuss and get feedback on.

It’s important for students to select their own goals. This leads to academic success and gives students agency over their own learning. Selecting and setting goals helps students figure out what they do best as learners. It helps them figure out what they should continue to do and where they may need support to continue to grow.

During every part of the goal-setting process, I encourage teachers to provide students with choice. From the start, students choose their own goals and the strategies they want to use to work toward them. As their teacher, you will provide your students with ideas and suggestions, but, ultimately, they will make their own choices. They will look at their own writing and feedback on their writing to determine what goals would be best for them to work on.

Even when students monitor their progress at different points throughout the year, they get to decide if they feel they have achieved a goal or need to work on it more. Since students will receive feedback on their writing from peers, and will also have writing conferences with you, your input will be taken into consideration as they make their decisions.

Giving students agency means trusting them to make smart choices. If they make choices about their goals and how to pursue them that aren’t the best, they can always revise their goals and their writing. They might abandon a goal altogether and perhaps choose another goal. The feedback they receive from peers and teacher writing conferences will help them make these decisions. It’s all part of the learning process. I want your students to feel supported by you but also invested in their goals and in control of their learning. This is an essential balance.

Education Week