What Are SMART Goals? A Guide for Preschool Dance Teachers
As preschool dance teachers, we spend a lot of time thinking about what we're going to teach. We choose music, plan exercises, prepare props, and come up with imaginative activities that will keep our students engaged. But how often do we stop to think about exactly what we want our students to learn from those activities?
Of course, most of us have general goals for our classes. We want our students to develop coordination, improve their balance, learn basic dance steps, and become more comfortable participating in a group. But those are fairly broad objectives, and they don't necessarily tell us what we should be teaching in a particular lesson or how we'll recognize when our students are making progress.
One tool that can help us turn those broad objectives into more specific teaching goals is the SMART framework. It's a method of goal-setting that has been used in business, education, and other fields for decades. And while it wasn't originally developed for teaching young children, I think it can be particularly useful when planning preschool dance classes.
Where Did SMART Goals Come From?
The SMART framework dates back to 1981, when George T. Doran published an article in Management Review titled There's a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management's Goals and Objectives. Doran was writing about business management, not education, and his purpose was to help organizations establish clearer, more useful objectives.
The idea was fairly straightforward. Instead of setting vague goals such as improving productivity or increasing efficiency, organizations should identify what they wanted to accomplish, how they would recognize progress, and when they expected to achieve their objectives.
Doran's original version of the acronym stood for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-Related. Over the years, different versions of the framework have developed, and today one of the most commonly used versions is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
Although SMART goals began as a business management tool, the underlying principle applies to many other areas, including education. When we know what we're trying to accomplish, we can make more thoughtful decisions about how to get there.
What Does SMART Stand For?
Each letter in SMART represents a characteristic of a well-defined goal. While the wording sometimes varies depending on the field in which the framework is being used, we'll use the version commonly found in education.
Specific: What exactly do you want students to learn or accomplish? A specific goal identifies a particular skill, concept, or behavior rather than a broad area of development.
Measurable: How will you recognize progress? The goal should include something you can observe or assess, even if you're not measuring it with numbers.
Achievable: Is the goal realistic for your students? Consider their ages, developmental abilities, previous experience, and the time available for instruction.
Relevant: Does the goal support what you're trying to teach? In preschool dance, objectives should connect to meaningful movement skills, dance concepts, or classroom expectations.
Time-Bound: When will you work toward the goal and evaluate progress? This might be over a single lesson, a four-week session, or an entire term.
These five criteria help us move from general intentions to objectives that can actually guide our teaching.
For example, saying that we want our preschool students to improve their coordination is a good starting point. But coordination encompasses many different skills. Are we working on jumping with two feet, alternating feet while marching, or coordinating arm movements with music? Once we identify a more specific objective, it becomes easier to choose appropriate activities and recognize improvement.
How Are SMART Goals Used in Education?
Although SMART goals originated in business, educators now use the framework in a variety of ways. Teachers may use SMART goals when planning lessons, developing learning objectives, monitoring student progress, or identifying areas in which students need additional support. Schools may also use them when establishing broader instructional goals or planning professional development for teachers.
One of the most common educational applications is writing learning objectives. Rather than simply stating that students will learn about a subject, a teacher identifies something students should be able to demonstrate after instruction.
For example, an elementary music teacher might set a goal for students to recognize and reproduce a simple rhythmic pattern by the end of a unit. A physical education teacher might focus on a particular movement skill, such as throwing a ball toward a target. In both cases, the teacher has identified a specific learning objective that can guide instruction and provide a way to evaluate progress.
The SMART framework can also help teachers reflect on their own instruction. If students aren't progressing toward an objective, the teacher can consider whether the goal was realistic, whether students had enough opportunities to practice, or whether a different instructional approach might be more effective.
I think this last point is especially valuable. Goal-setting shouldn't simply be a way to measure whether students are successful. It should also help us evaluate how well our teaching is meeting their needs.
Why Use SMART Goals in Preschool Dance?
You may be wondering whether this kind of goal-setting is really necessary for preschool dance. After all, we're teaching young children, not preparing students for academic exams or formal assessments. Shouldn't our classes be focused on movement, music, creativity, and having fun?
Absolutely! But I don't think thoughtful planning and imaginative teaching are at odds with one another. In fact, I believe they work best together.
When we teach preschool dance, many of our activities are designed to introduce specific movement concepts. We might ask students to jump over imaginary puddles, balance like flamingos, or tiptoe through an enchanted forest. To our students, these activities are games. But as teachers, we should understand the movement skills and concepts we're introducing through them.
SMART goals can help us become more intentional about those choices. Instead of selecting an activity simply because it's fun or fits our lesson theme, we can consider what we want children to learn and choose activities that support that objective.
For example, if our goal is to introduce different movement levels, we might plan activities that encourage children to stretch high, move close to the floor, and explore positions in between. We could use an imaginative story about growing flowers, animals in a forest, or traveling through a magical kingdom. The theme provides the imaginative experience, while our learning objective gives the activity its educational purpose.
And because we know what we're looking for, we can begin to recognize whether students are understanding and applying the movement concept.
SMART Goals Should Guide Our Teaching, Not Limit Our Students
There is one important consideration when applying SMART goals to preschool dance: young children develop at different rates.
A goal that might be appropriate for one four-year-old could be too challenging for another child of the same age. Even within a single class, students may have very different levels of coordination, attention, confidence, and previous movement experience. We need to account for those differences when establishing expectations.
This is why I prefer to use SMART goals primarily as a planning and observation tool for the teacher rather than as a set of rigid performance requirements for every child.
For example, we might decide to spend four weeks introducing and reinforcing balancing activities. During that time, one student may progress from needing support to briefly balancing independently. Another may become more confident lifting one foot off the floor, even if she still needs assistance. Both children have made progress, and both have benefited from the instruction.
The goal gives us a direction for our teaching, but it shouldn't become a deadline by which every child is expected to demonstrate the same ability.
This is particularly important when working with preschoolers because many of the foundational skills we're introducing will continue developing for years. Balance, coordination, musicality, and movement control aren't skills children master in a single lesson or even a single session. We introduce them, provide opportunities for practice, and gradually build on them as children develop.
SMART Goals Can Help With Classroom Management, Too
When we think about goals for preschool dance, we naturally tend to focus on movement skills and dance technique. But the SMART framework can also be useful when establishing classroom routines and expectations.
For many preschoolers, dance class is one of their first experiences learning to participate in a group without a parent nearby. They're learning to follow directions, take turns, move safely around other children, and become familiar with classroom routines. These are skills that need to be taught and practiced just like movement concepts.
For example, rather than setting a vague goal of improving classroom behavior, we might focus on helping students learn a consistent routine for taking turns during traveling exercises.
We can introduce the routine, model what we expect, provide opportunities to practice, and observe whether students are becoming more comfortable participating independently. We can also evaluate whether the activity itself is developmentally appropriate. If children are struggling to wait through a long line of individual turns, perhaps we need to change the structure of the exercise rather than simply remind them to be patient.
Again, the goal helps us identify what we're trying to teach while encouraging us to consider how we can best support our students.
Getting Started With SMART Goals in Your Dance Classes
If you've never used SMART goals before, I wouldn't recommend trying to write one for every exercise or activity in your lesson plans. That would quickly become more complicated than it needs to be!
Instead, begin by choosing one movement concept or classroom expectation you'd like to focus on over the next few weeks. Think about what you want students to learn, how you'll introduce the skill, and what progress might look like for children at different developmental stages.
Then use that objective to guide your lesson planning. Choose exercises and imaginative activities that reinforce the concept, revisit it regularly, and observe how students respond. At the end of your planning period, consider what worked, what didn't, and whether you're ready to introduce a new challenge or continue reinforcing the same skill.
You may find that you've already been doing much of this informally. The SMART framework simply gives you a more structured way to think through the process.
Bringing More Purpose to Preschool Dance
A well-planned preschool dance class should be both educational and enjoyable. We want children to develop movement skills, learn basic dance concepts, and become comfortable participating in a classroom, but we also want them to discover the joy of dancing.
SMART goals can help us approach those objectives with greater intention. They encourage us to think about what we're teaching, why we're teaching it, and how we can recognize progress without losing the creativity and imagination that make preschool dance so special.
And they don't need to make lesson planning complicated. Sometimes all it takes is identifying one clear objective and choosing a few engaging activities that help children work toward it.
In the next two articles, we'll look at practical examples of how to apply the SMART framework in preschool dance, first by setting goals for movement skills and then by using goals to teach classroom routines and expectations.
