The Power of Yet: what to expect in your Goal Setting meeting

'Learning to be a learner' is an on-going theme as children grow through our school. This includes setting personal goals (big and small), strategies to break down big goals into smaller steps, and also embracing the struggle that comes with learning something new.

Term one Goal Setting is a chance for our Autahi students to begin to think and talk about what their personal goals are and how they will work towards them. 

Before our Autahi students start school, they have already learnt to do lots of hard things, such as walking and talking. This learning took lots of Bravery and Perseverance: our students are already learners.

We can build on this. In Autahi, we are just beginning to understand how we can set goals for ourselves, and work towards them through many small steps, called Kaisen Steps. As we achieve each small step, we can celebrate and be boosted to keep working towards the bigger goal.

 

A great example of this can be seen if you flick through your child's writing book. Each child has a 'micro-goal' for writing that they are working on. It might be holding their pencil in a pinchy grip or listening for the first sound in a word: bite-sized goals that build towards the bigger goal of writing 'one good sentence'.

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Keeping going takes Grit and positive self-talk can help. This is where the word 'yet' is so important. I can't play the guitar YET (but I will!). I can't read all the words in my reading book YET (but I will!). Tell yourself, 'I can do it!', 'keep practising!' and 'mistakes make your brain grow'.

Our Goal Setting meeting is a three-way conversation between child, parent and teacher. We have done some thinking and talking with our students about things they can do now, and things they would like to be able to do - but can't YET.

Our students' goals are often big and chunky. We will support them to think about how big goals can be broken down into smaller, bite-sized pieces (Kaisen steps). We will talk about who can help, what we can say to ourselves to keep going ('I can do this!'), and also some Character Strengths that we can engage to help us.

We are looking forward to sharing these conversations with you and celebrating your child's achievements day by day, week by week as the year progresses.