Help Students Set and Accomplish Difficult Goals

If you’ve ever watched a student carefully avoid the hardest part of an assignment while knocking out all the “easy wins,” you’re not alone. Just like adults, kids love the tasks that feel safe and quick to finish. The problem? The most important learning often lives inside the hardest task.

That’s where Eat the Frog goal setting comes in. This simple, kid-friendly strategy helps students identify their biggest challenge first—and tackle it head-on. When paired with SMART goals, it gives students a clear plan, builds confidence, and teaches them that they can do hard things, one step at a time.

Eat the Frog is kinda like the old joke: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The idea of “Eat the Frog” comes from Brian Tracy’s popular book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.

So how does “Eat the Frog” actually work in an elementary classroom? Let’s break it down step by step.

How to Help Students Start With Their Biggest Challenges

Let’s break down how you can implement this surprisingly fun strategy in your classroom.

What Are SMART Goals?

When we talk about setting goals with students, we focus on SMART goals. These goals are:

• Specific – clear and precise
• Measurable – you can track progress
• Action-Oriented – steps to reach the goal
• Realistic – achievable with effort
• Timely – has a deadline

However, even with SMART goals, students often want to start with what’s easiest. Eat the Frog flips that mindset by encouraging students to start with the hardest part first.

Start with a Challenge: What’s Your Frog?

Imagine asking your students to eat a frog. You’ll get wide eyes, scrunched noses, and a chorus of “Ewwww!” That’s precisely why this metaphor works. Eating a frog sounds awful, but if they can do that, everything else on their list will feel easy in comparison.

Discuss with your students:

• What is the frog? The hardest or least appealing task.
• Why eat it first? Because then it’s done, and the rest of the day feels achievable.

For example, if their goal is to improve their reading fluency, their “frog” might be reading aloud during small-group time. Once they tackle it, practicing independently or reading with a partner feels easier.

Model Your Own SMART Goal (and Your Frog)

Students learn best when you model your thinking process. Share your own SMART goal and identify your frog within it. For instance:

“My SMART goal is to plan all my reading groups by Monday morning so our week starts smoothly. My frog? Planning for my most challenging group first, because once I’ve tackled that, the rest is quicker and easier.”

Break down:

• Why it’s challenging
• How it’s specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and timely
• What are your action steps are

This shows students that even adults have frogs to eat – and we don’t like it either!

Create a Class SMART Goal Together

Before asking students to create their individual goals, build a class SMART goal focused on a challenge most students share. For example:

• Challenge (frog): Staying focused during independent work time
• SMART goal example: “Our class will improve independent work focus to 90% on-task time by the end of the month by practicing silent work strategies and tracking our daily progress.”

Modeling a class goal helps students see the full process before applying it to their own learning.

Real Classroom Example

In my classroom, students were struggling to learn their math facts. As a class, we did some brainstorming and goal-setting around that task. While each student had a slightly different math fact they were working on, they could use similar strategies to reach their goal.

Here is an example of one of my students’ goal sheet to learn her doubles facts:

I noticed students were more willing to take risks after just two weeks of using this strategy.

Support Students with Goal Setting Tools

Don’t reinvent the wheel every time. Use free goal-setting forms or data portfolio templates to guide students through the process. Have them keep their goals in a Goal Setting and Data Portfolio they revisit throughout the year. This builds ownership and shows them that eating their frog leads to real, trackable growth.

Why Eat the Frog Works for Students

Teaching “Eat the Frog” goal setting isn’t just about doing the hard stuff first. It teaches students:

• Prioritization skills
• Growth mindset and perseverance
• Confidence when tackling challenges

And honestly, it gives them a fun phrase to remember (just wait for the giggles when they say, “I ate my frog today!”).

How Students Can Eat That Frog!

SMART goals alone help students create clear, actionable plans. Combine them with “Eat the Frog” goal setting, and you give your students a life skill that stretches far beyond your classroom. After all, if they can eat their frog first thing in the morning, there’s nothing they can’t handle for the rest of the day.