Goal Setting Craft for Elementary Students

This Goal Setting Craft helps students express the goals that they have set for themselves in an artful, creative way that becomes a beautiful bulletin board display for your classroom and a great keepsake for parents.  Setting goals is an important skill for students to practice all year long.

This goal-setting bulletin board resource includes many goal-setting template options so that teachers can differentiate them for the needs of their learners. Teachers can choose the sentence frames and format to motivate their classroom and students.  

This goal setting bullet board craft fits right in with my other SMART Goal Setting resources. It makes a great classroom bulletin board decoration and parent communication tool!

If you would like more information about SMART Goal Setting in the classroom, you can see this blog post about Student Goal Setting in Elementary School or for an even deeper focus, the post explains the Goal Setting & Data Portfolios.

Main Components of the Goal Setting Craft

The main pages of the goal setting bullet board craft are three circles and a center circle with an arrow attached to it (four pages pictured below).  The arrow holds the Goal Setting Craftivity together via the glue areas on each circle.

The outer circle and the first inner circle are for school goals.  The next circle is a personal goal and the center circle with an arrow holds it all together and includes the student’s name.

Each section offers various options. You can reuse this craftivity several times throughout the year simply by changing the sentence frames in the circles.

Start with easier sentences at the beginning of the year and progress to more difficult goal setting concepts, such as setting a timeframe and measurable outcome.

Variations of the Goal Setting Craftivity

The craftivity comes with a variety of options.  Included in the outer school goal circle are 28 different variations to choose from.  The second school goal circle comes with 12 options, the personal goal 11 options, and the center circle with an arrow has 36 options, including a blank circle, words, or a variety of images of children.

Here are some of the goal setting examples for the outer circle.  You can scaffold learning throughout the year by moving from drawing to cut and paste to writing goals.  The written goals also vary from describing specific steps to sharing what a student is good at and what he wants to work on.

The variations include writing one or two goals, being able to draw a goal or use differentiated sentence frames to scaffold the writing.  There are plenty of variations to meet the needs of all learners in your classroom.  

If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can also make your own!  Included is blank versions where the teacher can even write in the language she wants students to use.

Also included is a cut and paste version where students are given a set of goals and action steps.  I have included samples in the PDF as well as an editable Powerpoint file where the teacher can add in her own goals for students.

For instance, if you want all students to work on math goals, but students may be working on a variety of different math goals, type in the goals and the action steps they could take within your classroom.  Print out just the math goals and have students choose their goal and action step.  

If you keep the file from year to year, you can repeat the craft at different times of the year, including the at the beginning of the school year, at the new year, or at the end of the year. This goal setting craft makes a great growth mindset activity, too! Students to choose a different goal and action step as they make progress and accomplish their goals.

How to Create the Goal-Setting Craftivity

In general, the teacher would choose one circle from each layer and have students fill out the goal, color and cut out the circles and glue them together.

Since this craftivity is all about goal setting, it will be helpful to do some work on whole class goal setting with students.  You can see this blog post about how I help students Set Goals in Elementary School or this post on goal setting in the moment, which helps students align a goal with an action step.

In my second grade classroom, we do a lot of whole group discussions about setting goals.  We start the year with behavior goals and slowly move onto academic goals, starting with math because it’s generally a bit more tangible for my younger students.

One of the key connections where I find students need a lot of work is matching a goal with an appropriate action step.  So often, students set a goal and say they want to accomplish something.  However, to really set a SMART Goal, one needs to create an action plan.  I simplify this for students by having them choose one action step from a class brainstorm of many options that they could choose.

This blog post outlines how we set math goals using an arrow to discuss all of the possible action steps students can take in our classroom.

Students or the teacher can choose multiple circles for one layer if they like. When assembling, simply glue them together within the same layer using the glue area as a guide to align the pieces.

To Assemble the Craftivity

To assemble the Goal Setting Bulletin Board Craft, layer the circles on top of each other so that they fit neatly together inside of each other in order from largest to smallest.  Line up the glue areas so that they meet each other on the sides.  Place a small amount of glue in the glue areas.

Gently place the arrow on top of the circles so that the center circle is in the middle and the arrow covers the glue areas. Press the arrow to spread the glue a bit and let the goal-setting craftivity dry.

If students choose multiple circles for each section, place the circles on top of each other and glue them together before aligning the sections and gluing the arrow.

How to Purchase the Goal Setting Craftivity

You can purchase the Goal Setting Craftivity on my website or on Teachers Pay Teachers.

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Would you like some FREE Goal Setting forms to use with your students?