Empowering Students Through a Focus on Incremental Progress

When I first read James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, I was immediately interested in how this idea of getting 1 percent better could apply to my students. While setting goals can sometimes feel overwhelming, I thought that my students might feel more empowered by the idea of needing to make only small steps toward larger goals. 

INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF 1 Percent BETTER TO STUDENTS

I wanted to help my students contextualize this idea of getting 1 percent better, so I began by introducing two examples from Clear’s book: an ice cube melting and a scale tipping. An ice cube in a room that is warming up one degree at a time won’t melt until the room reaches 32 degrees. Even though the room is warming little by little, it takes that final distinct step of shifting over 32 degrees to melt. The other example is that of grains of sand on a scale—it takes only one grain of sand to shift the balance on a scale, even if you are steadily adding grains over time.

Both of these examples were easy for my students to visualize and helped them recognize how small steps over time eventually lead to a specific outcome. Depending on the age of your students, it could be helpful and even fun to demonstrate one of these examples or something similar that you and your students could ground your discussion in.

SETTING GOALS WITH STUDENTS

After introducing the idea of making big changes through small steps, I shift the conversation to goal-setting more explicitly. I introduce the idea of setting a goal with the intention of taking small steps to get better and getting closer to the goal each day. I also remind students that it is important to set realistic goals—ones that are slightly outside their current performance, yet not so hard that the goals are unattainable in a small chunk of time.

For many students, and younger students especially, it can be more impactful to see smaller moments of improvement and smaller achievements along the way as opposed to just focusing on meeting one larger goal. This aligns with the idea of getting 1 percent better—students can focus on just the small improvement, one bit at a time, rather than getting overwhelmed by a goal that feels really far away.

CONNECTING OUR GOAL OF GETTING 1 Percent BETTER TO READING

As a first-grade teacher, I knew the importance of building my students’ reading stamina and wanted to start there with our 1 percent better goal-setting practice. We began by setting the goal of increasing fluency to reading 20 words per minute. While at first this might sound like a big number to students, teachers can remind students that the key is to just get a little bit better every day—they don’t need to be able to read 20 words per minute today or tomorrow or even next week. 

Once we set the goal, we began working toward it as a class. Students would read each day, and for one minute of that, they would time themselves to see how many words they could read. Then, each student graphed their progress on a bar graph, marking the number of words each time they tried. Some students started at 12 words, then got to 13, then 14, and so on. I continually reminded students that the goal each day was just to get a little bit better, and by focusing on that incremental improvement, they would eventually reach that overall goal.

As students graphed their progress, there were some dips in the data—some books were more challenging than others, and some days were more challenging than others. I reminded students that these little setbacks were totally normal and all part of the process—the important thing was to keep working at the goal knowing that over time we were building a habit and growing.

In addition to graphing their progress, I’ve found it helpful for students to have a visible reminder of the goal they are working toward. Teachers could have students write their goals down in a journal or keep a sticky note with the goal on their desk. I’ve done both and found that as long as students are thinking about the goal and connecting it to the idea of getting a little bit better every time they try, it’s working.

Celebrating incremental progress together

To further reinforce the importance of staying focused on our goals, I created opportunities for students to talk about their goals with partners and in small groups. I encouraged students to share their goals, their progress, and how they were trying to get better every day—reading more, reading different types of books, etc. I heard my students saying that they were working hard to get better, that they were practicing every day, and that they would reach the goal eventually. My students felt optimistic and empowered as they celebrated their incremental progress. 

When growing a new habit or goal, it is important to set small goals along the way, to get about 1 percent better each day. If we can build these skills with our students, they improve not only as readers, but also as goal setters who know how to persist toward important goals in school and the world.