Lesson 5: High School Portfolio & Goal Setting
A goal you cannot fail is not a goal — writing one specific enough to be wrong, and keeping the evidence that shows what you did.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions
WALT: I can set a goal specific enough that I would know if I had met it.
WILF: You can state a goal with a number and a date attached, name the evidence that would prove it either way, and explain why one of your first attempts could not have failed.
Whakataukī | Traditional Wisdom
“Whāia te iti kahurangi; ki te tuohu koe, me he maunga teitei.”
Seek the treasure you value most dearly; if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.
Te Whakatakotoranga | Run of show
- Do Now — Could this goal fail? 8 min
- Act 1 — Make it fail-able 15 min
- Act 2 — What is the evidence? 15 min
- Act 3 — Start the kete 15 min
- Synthesise — The mountain and the step 8 min
- Exit ticket 4 min
Tirohanga Whānui | What this lesson is doing
Students have written goals before, usually in a template, usually forgotten by week four. The reason is not motivation. It is that almost every school goal a Year 9 writes is unfalsifiable — "try harder in maths", "be more organised", "do my best". Nobody could ever demonstrate you had failed, which means nobody can demonstrate you succeeded either, and a goal that cannot be checked quietly stops existing.
So this lesson uses one test, applied relentlessly: could this goal fail? If not, it is a mood, not a goal. Then it does the half that goal-setting lessons usually skip — collecting the evidence. A portfolio is not a scrapbook of nice work; it is the proof that the sentence you wrote in week two turned out to be true.
You'll need
- Whatever your school actually uses to store student work — a folder, a shared drive, a physical kete. Decide before the lesson; Act 3 needs a real destination, not a hypothetical one.
- The exit tickets from Lessons 1–4 if you kept them. They are the first evidence students have.
- Paper. Devices only for Act 3, and only if the storage is digital.
Do Now — Could this goal fail? 8 min
What it is: The test, introduced by using it rather than by explaining it.
Run it
- Put four goals up (1 min): Try harder in science · Hand in every science homework this term · Be a better friend · Read one book a fortnight until the holidays.
- Ask one question (4 min): in pairs — for each, how would we know at the end of term whether you had failed? Not succeeded. Failed. The negative framing is sharper and students spot the difference immediately.
- Sort them (2 min): two can fail, two cannot. The two that cannot are the two that sound the most like real school goals, which is the uncomfortable part.
- State the rule (1 min): a goal you cannot fail is not a goal. Write it up and leave it there for the rest of the lesson.
Act 1 — Make it fail-able 15 min
What it is: Rewriting real goals until they can be checked, using SMART as a tool rather than a worksheet.
Run it
- Write a bad one on purpose (2 min): each student writes a goal in the usual vague way. "Get better at English." Everyone has one ready.
- Add a number and a date (4 min): those two additions alone fix most goals. "Get better at English" becomes "hand in all four English pieces on time this term". Now it can fail.
- Apply SMART properly (5 min): use the curriculum's own example below. Test each letter against the rewritten goal. Spend the time on "achievable" — that is where goals go to die, because students write goals they have already met so they cannot lose.
- The honest calibration (4 min): a good goal should feel roughly like a coin-flip. If you are certain you will manage it, it is a description of your current life. If you are certain you will not, it is a wish. Ask students to move theirs toward the middle.
| Version | Can it fail? | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Try harder in maths | No | Nothing to check. A mood. |
| Get better at maths this year | Barely | Better than what, measured how, by when? |
| Attempt every question in the weekly practice set for the next six weeks | Yes | None — and note it measures what you control, not the mark |
Worth saying out loud
The best student goals target actions, not results. "Get 80%" depends on the test, the marker and the day. "Attempt every practice question" is entirely within the student's control and is the thing most likely to produce the 80% anyway. Students find this genuinely freeing.
Act 2 — What is the evidence? 15 min
What it is: Deciding in advance what would prove the goal was met — before there is any temptation to be generous with yourself.
Run it
- Name the proof (5 min): for their goal, students write what a person who did not trust them would accept as proof. A stamped diary, four returned assignments, a coach's record, a photo of the finished thing.
- The swap test (4 min): exchange with a partner. The partner asks: "if you told me you had done this, what would you show me?" If the answer is "you would just have to believe me", the goal needs sharpening, not the student.
- Set the checkpoint (3 min): pick a date roughly halfway and write it down. A goal with no midpoint is a goal you discover you have missed on the last day.
- Plan the failure (3 min): "What will you do if at the checkpoint you are behind?" Answering this in advance, calmly, is the single most useful thing in the lesson — because at the checkpoint the honest answer feels like proof you are a failure rather than information.
Act 3 — Start the kete 15 min
What it is: Setting up the portfolio properly, with real contents, in the real place it will live.
Run it
- Explain what it is for (3 min): not a display of best work. A record of evidence, so that in two years, when someone asks what you have actually done, you are not reconstructing it from memory. Reference requests, scholarship forms, job applications and NCEA portfolios all ask the same question.
- Put the first four things in (6 min): the goal and its evidence plan from today; the contribution sentence from Lesson 4; the problem-to-person card from Lesson 1; the question from Lesson 3. That is a real portfolio on day one, not an empty folder with a title.
- Write the index (4 min): one line per item — what it is, when, and why it is in here. The "why" line is what makes a portfolio usable later; without it, it is a pile.
- Decide the habit (2 min): when will you add to this? A specific recurring moment — the end of each unit, the last Friday of the month. A portfolio with no habit is a folder that gets made once.
Synthesise — The mountain and the step 8 min
Run it
- Read the whakataukī properly (3 min): it is usually quoted as "aim high", which is half of it. The second clause matters more — if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain. It assumes you will sometimes fall short and says the thing that counts is what you were reaching for. That is the correct attitude to a goal that can fail.
- Look back at the week (3 min): five lessons ago students did not know where the toilets were. Ask what they can now do that they could not — navigate the week, name who to ask, trace a post, narrow a question, state a contribution. It is a substantial list and worth saying aloud.
- Close the pack (2 min): "Everything in your kete is something you made in your first fortnight here. Add to it."
Exit ticket 4 min
Handed in: your goal, its checkpoint date, and the one thing you would show someone as proof.
Keep these. At the checkpoint date, hand them back — that ten-second act is what makes the difference between a goal-setting lesson and a goal.
Ngā Huarahi Ako | Differentiation
Tautoko / Support
- Offer a goal frame to complete: "I will [action] [how often] until [date]." Filling that in produces a fail-able goal without needing the theory.
- For Act 2, give three evidence types to choose between rather than composing one.
- Build the kete physically — a named folder with four things in it beats a shared drive for a student who will lose the login.
Toitoi / Extension
- Write a goal for something outside school and apply the same test. Sport and music goals are usually already action-based and measurable, which is worth noticing — students are often better at this than they think, just not at school.
- Find a real scholarship or job application form and identify which questions your kete could already answer. Which could it not? Those gaps are next year's goals.
- The "actions not results" rule has limits. When does a results goal make more sense? Argue it with an example.
Te reo Māori
- Kupu: whāinga (goal, target) · kete (basket) · taunakitanga (evidence) · manawanui (perseverance) · iti kahurangi (a treasured aspiration).
- Kete is the right word for the portfolio and worth using all year — it carries the sense of something you carry with you and add to, not a folder you are assessed on.
Mātauranga Māori | The kete is carried, not displayed
A kete is a working object. It is woven for a purpose, it is carried, and what goes in it is chosen because it will be needed. That is a more accurate picture of a portfolio than the display version students usually meet, where the best work is arranged to be admired.
The distinction has a practical consequence in Act 3. If the kete is for display, students put in their neatest work. If it is carried, they put in what they will need later — including the messy first attempt at a question, the problem-to-person card, the goal that turned out to be too easy. Evidence of change is more useful than evidence of polish, and it is what a reference or an application is actually asking for.
The three-baskets pūrākau — ngā kete o te wānanga — is the well-known reference here and can be used if it is part of the kōrero in your rohe. Versions differ between iwi. If you tell it, tell the version your community tells, or name whose version you are using.
Hononga Marautanga | Curriculum
SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound) targets help set clear achievable goals (e.g. a goal to improve cardiovascular fitness might be to run 1.5km in under 10 minutes three times a week for four weeks).
Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Health and Physical Education · Phase 4 · Physical Education · statement id 16969
SMART is usually delivered as a worksheet with five boxes, which students complete without their goal getting any better. This lesson uses the statement's own worked example as the standard to match — note how specific it is: a distance, a time, a frequency, a duration — and adds the single test that makes the letters bite. Could this goal fail? A goal that passes SMART on paper but cannot fail has not actually been made specific, measurable or time bound; it has been described using those words.
Sources and checking
- No claims about goal-setting effectiveness appear on this page. There is a large literature and it is more contested than the standard school treatment implies. The argument here is made from a mechanism students can check themselves in the Do Now — an unfalsifiable goal cannot be assessed — rather than from a cited effect size.
- The SMART example is quoted from the curriculum statement itself, not invented, which is why it is unusually concrete. Use it as the calibration standard.
- Act 3 needs a real storage destination decided before you teach. A kete that is hypothetical on the day it is created never becomes real afterwards.
- On ngā kete o te wānanga: versions of the pūrākau differ between iwi and this page deliberately does not tell one. If you use it, use your rohe's version or name whose you are telling.